Design Personas – New Ways, New Contexts

Abstract

Design personas have, since their origins in the late 1990s, been recognised as a design tool to foster ideation and empathy with different user groups. The method originates from software development and has since its instigation become a widespread method adopted in many design disciplines and processes, such as innovation and ideation of IT products, User Experience design, agile systems developing, communication, and marketing (Nielsen 2012; Pruitt & Grudin 2003). To get product design closer to the everyday lives of the users, design personas are a means to capture the everyday experiences and needs of users and customers. Focusing on the user or customer in the design process is in opposition to an artistic understanding of the designer as someone who, by experimentation with materials and form, gets inspiration to create unique products.

User Goals, Behaviours and Attitudes: Developing Web User Personas of Art and Design Students

“…The scientific foundation of the personas creation method was qualitative (Nielsen, 2018). This has been criticized for empiricism for its fictional character (Chapman & Milham, 2006).…”

Personas for Artificial Intelligence (AI) an Open Source Toolbox

“…The Personas method, a well-known and successful HCI method, originally introduced by Alan Cooper in 1999 for user-centered interaction design [24], we believe is also well applicable in the context of AI systems. Personas are archetypes of users that help designers and developers focus on the needs and goals of target users throughout the product development process [25], [26]. The benefits of personas in the design and development of complex user interfaces are well known because personas closely approximate the mental model of various end users.…”

“…Before the concept of personas was introduced by Cooper as a method for the development of software-based products [24], personas had been widely used also in other contexts such as general product design, marketing, communication, and service design [26]. The persona method was also further adapted, for example to better suit the software engineering process [63], or to fit to the development of products associated with social and political goals rather than market introduction [64].…”

Stories of structures, spaces and bodies: towards a tectonics of well-being

“…This kind of narrative approach includes students reading fiction and poetry, as well as engaging in creative scenario writings [ 36 ]. Storytelling in architectural thinking has primarily focused on narrative research approaches; concentrating on capturing personal experiences of users or architects, representing spatial atmospheres [ 37 , 38 ] and developing so-called personas as design fictive characters to support design solutions [ 39 ]. Sussman & Hollander [ 40 ] speculate on the importance of personal attachment to another person, an object, an experience, a place, as well as the unusual human capacity to create and share stories.…”