Use Cases for Design Personas: A Systematic Review and New Frontiers

Joni Salminen, Kathleen Wenyun Guan, Soon Gyo Jung, Bernard Jansen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Personas represent the needs of users in diverse populations and impact design by endearing empathy and improving communication. While personas have been lauded for their benefits, we could locate no prior review of persona use cases in design, prompting the question: how are personas actually used to achieve these benefits? To address this question, we review 95 articles containing persona application across multiple domains, and identify software development, healthcare, and higher education as the top domains that employ personas. We then present a three-stage design hierarchy of persona usage to describe how personas are used in design tasks. Finally, we assess the increasing trend of persona initiatives aimed towards social good rather than solely commercial interests. Our findings establish a roadmap of best practices for how practitioners can innovatively employ personas to increase the value of designs and highlight avenues of using personas for socially impactful purposes.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI 2022 - Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450391573
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 29 Apr 2022
Event2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2022 - Virtual, Online, United States
Duration: 30 Apr 20225 May 2022

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityVirtual, Online
Period30/04/225/05/22

Keywords

  • Literature review
  • Personas
  • Social good
  • Use cases

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