A Template for Design Personas

Abstract

The persona method is gaining widespread use and support. Many researchers have reported from single cases and from novel domains on how they have used the method. However, the way companies and design groups describe personas has not been the focus of attention. This paper analyses 47 descriptions from 13 companies and compares these to an analysis of recommendations from 11 templates from literature. Furthermore, 28 interviews with Danish practitioners with experience in using personas are analyzed for content on persona descriptions. The study finds that a Danish persona style has developed that is different from the recommendations in the lack of marketing and business related information and the absence of goals as differentiator for personas. Furthermore, the inspiration and knowledge on personas originates from co-workers and seminars and not much from literature. This indicates that the community of practice influences the persona style.

How Does Personification Impact Ad Performance and Empathy? An Experiment with Online Advertising

“…On the other hand, there is a strong base of HCI literature "defending" the use of personified user groups, mostly arising from the fact that these can foster a sense of empathy among decision-makers. This advantage is consistently cited in the literature, starting in Cooper's seminal persona book (Cooper, 1999) and repeated by influential HCI scholars such as Pruitt and Grudin (Pruitt & Adlin, 2006;Pruitt & Grudin, 2003), Nielsen (2019), and others. However, this stream of literature requires empirical verification, as the justification of the empathy benefits has thus far been based on theoretical and conceptual premises.…”

“…• Communication and shared mental models. Personification summarizes the end-users' attributes in intuitive human representations that are more memorable than tables, numbers, or charts (Cooper, 1999;Nielsen, 2019;Pruitt & Adlin, 2006;Pruitt & Grudin, 2003). These human representations make it "easy for decision makers and employees to understand and to communicate effectively with each other."…”

“…A persona refers to a fictitious representation of a known or presumed target group of users or customers (Cooper, 1999;Pruitt & Grudin, 2003). A persona is a user archetype defined by his or her needs, goals, and interests (Nielsen, 2019). Personas have typically been applied in the development and design of computer software, where understanding user behavior is crucial to develop features and functionalities that serve endusers' needs (Long, 2009).…”

“…For example, if the average user watches YouTube for one hour a day, then the fictive PUG person's bio will show that they watch YouTube that amount. PUGs have less information than many personas, though, in that PUGs do not contain quotations or goals that are considered typical information in personas (Nielsen et al, 2015). Personas, thus, can be considered a specialized type of PUG.…”

“…More precisely, these benefits (i.e., improved user experience, more effective ad, increased empathy) may relate to the ability of human ad designers to understand their fellow beings (Cooper, 1999;Nielsen, 2019). If so, PUGs can enhance this empathetic ability and provide ways for humans to strengthen their competitiveness against the automatic ad design algorithms.…”