As part of a project aiming at designing a smartphone application for students writing their Master's thesis, Mobile Probes were used as a method to gain knowledge about thesis writing students' day-to-day life and their work processes. The conducted probe did generate insights into students' daily routines. However, it also proved to have a value beyond the study. Participants in the probe reported how the questions of the probe led them to reflect on their thesis writing practices and in a few cases even develop them, and we suggest that this reflective aspect of the probe should be integrated into the smartphone application.

This paper proposes co-designing personas with users as a strategy to overcome a challenge inherent in the design of personas or fictitious users: On one hand, personas should appear realistic and believable as individuals, and on the other hand, personas should represent a broader range of users. By involving empirical users in all parts of the process of persona design, the risk of creating personas that are too stereotypical is minimized, as the participating users enrich the data on which the personas are based with up-to-date and firsthand contextual knowledge. Advantages of co-designing personas with users is illustrated by a case from higher education in which personas were co-designed with students as part of a project aiming at designing a smartphone application for Master's thesis students.