Using correspondence analysis to monitor the persona segmentation process

Abstract

Persona segmentation is the first phase of the persona method. It can be defined as the process of creating representative groups of similar users. Since the origin of the persona technique, both qualitative and quantitative methods have been used to create persona segments. While the qualitative approach has been criticized because of its lack of accuracy in creating persona segments, application of quantitative methods seems to be suffering from the same problem, due to inconsiderate application of statistical techniques. In this paper, we present Correspondence Analysis, an exploratory data technique, as an alternative quantitative persona segmentation method. We demonstrate that this method is appropriate to create useful persona profiles, and, additionally, it can aid in carefully monitoring the segmentation process.

Tradeoffs in Design Research: Development Oriented Triangulation

“…In particular for showroom, authors usually report the results and not the way these were obtained. Notable exceptions are (Brown, Lindgaard & Biddle 2012) who included a post-analysis literature study in their paper and (Laporte, Slegers & De Grooff 2012) who explicitly related their outcomes to existing guidelines.…”

“…The diversity of approaches which we found in our sample supports this amendment. For example: we did not find a paper which includes a full relevance cycle (field, workshop, lab) and only one to include a full rigor cyclelibrary, workshop, showroom (Laporte, Slegers & De Grooff 2012). There appear to be different recurring patterns of mixed-method approaches though.…”

“…Lab Showroom (Ardito et al 2012) A second difficulty arose in classifying workshop methods with a strong user involvement. (Laporte, Slegers & De Grooff 2012), for example, explored a new way of segmenting personas and (Clarke, Wright 2012) explored the elicitation of crosscultural stories in a series of co-creation settings. Such case studies of exploring new user-centereddesign methods have 'workshop' properties because the execution of the method is one central object of study, but they also have 'lab' attributes because, collaterally, they explore the applicability of the method in the application domain.…”

Two-Level Personas for Nested Design Spaces

“…Persona segmentation can be based on different forms of purely quantitative analysis (e.g. [44,25]) or on explicit assumptions about user groups [37,13], or they can be constructed in an ad hoc manner [35]. The need for a better integration of quantitative and qualitative data in persona construction is demonstrated in [43].…”

Personas is applicable

“…Furthermore, some have developed and evaluated the method by looking at single aspects of it e.g. segmentation [18], attributes [6], or the effect of using photos versus drawings or action figures [19,27]. The last mentioned are classical comparison studies where groups of designers or students try out different versions of the same material.…”