Integrating Personas and Use Case Models

Abstract

Multidisciplinary design is characterized by phases of distributed work and co-design activities. An effective sharing and integration of design representations that are created by sub-teams from different disciplines is still often challenging and typically requires the reconciliation of diverging design perspectives. This paper investigates an integrated use of personas and use cases -two popular types of design representations among interaction designers and software engineers respectively. The proposed integration is particularly suitable for role-based interactive systems and differs from existing integration approaches in that it is based on a critical examination of the prevalent understandings of the goal concept in persona and use case approaches. In the paper we suggest distinguishing between organizational and user goals (while at the same time acknowledging their interplay). Corresponding adaptations to use case notations and personas are introduced and discussed. These remove the tight coupling between goals and tasks and allow integration of organizational and different persona-specific design perspectives within one use case specification and at the interaction level. As a result, interactive systems can be specified by a more compact sets of use cases. This is illustrated by an example in the context of course management systems in higher education.

Overcoming Identity Threat: Using Persona Pedagogy in Intersectionality and Inclusion Training

“…Personas bring more emphasis to the diversity of users and contexts of use but are less detailed in their description of the interaction between user and system". (Dittmar and Forbrig 2019). Personas are a way of "deconstructing power imbalances" (O' Keeffe et al 2021) but also avail a way to represent diversity in a real world scenario.…”

“…Forbrig 2019). Personas are a way of "deconstructing power imbalances" (O'Keeffe et al 2021) but also avail a way to represent diversity in a real world scenario.…”

Data-Assisted Persona Construction Using Social Media Data

“…Personas can be integrated to use case models, resulting in revised or adapted use case models that describe more compact sets of use cases [3]. They may also be created and utilized as part of stories and scenarios [4] for enriching scenario or case-driven interaction design processes.…”