Personas and decision making in the design process

Abstract

Personas have become a well-lauded method to aid designers in keeping the needs of the intended user population at the forefront of the design process. However, few studies have ethnographically observed design teams that use personas, and fewer studies have looked specifically at how designers linguistically invoke personas in their decision-making sessions. This discourse analysis of the decision-making sessions of designers at a top tier design firm reveals that although the designers dedicate much time researching, developing, and refining personas, personas themselves make relatively few appearances in the designers' language during decision-making sessions. This study shows that, for persuasive ends, these designers, who are advocates of personas, routinely use other less precise and more designer-centric linguistic mechanisms in lieu of personas. Despite the scarcity of personas in the decisionmaking sessions, this ethnographic case study also explores the value of personas for this team even when the personas are not explicitly linguistically invoked.

Leveraging User Experience and Touchpoints Analysis for Services Design: Case of Crisis Management

“…However, the authors noted certain difficulties encountered by the participants, particularly in the use of personas and also in trusting the information transcribed in the personas provided. In fact, that confirms the result of the study undertaken by [55], who noted that the effective use of and empathy generated by the personas are observed much more in the creators of the personas than in other the members who did not take part in the creation of the personas.…”

Representing Children Living with Visual Impairments in the Design Process: A Case Study with Personae

“…When co-design is difficult or not possible, a method frequently used consists in the identification of representative users described as Personae (Friess 2012). Personae were proposed by Cooper (1999) as a tool for the design of interactions.…”

Reconceptualising Personas Across Cultures: Archetypes, Stereotypes & Collective Personas in Pastoral Namibia

“…Persona though holds on to a tendency by designers to use tacit [3] or explicit [1] assumptions on the users, instead of data grounded from user-research processes [15]. Persona also lacks an agreement about its definition, creation and its deployment [2], as well as it lacks on empirical research outside technology dominant settings [6].…”

“…Persona thus endeavours to inform design on the needs, requirements and aspirations of each of these groups of users regarding technologies or technological innovations. Paradoxically, however, some utilize persona to capture user-data that they then build upon assumptions and not on actual grounded data [3]. Besides Nielsen and Hansen [4] indicate a scarcity of empirical research on personas as research foci, which as a result endures a lack of consensus on what this artefact comprises, as well as in many researchers and practitioners' reluctance to embrace it in design decision-making [5].…”