Personas

Why?

Personas are fictional characters that represent different users or stakeholders. The method enables the students to see beyond their own needs and values as to see the problem through the eyes of the user. Moreover, it may be easier to relate to a persona than to some statistics or segmentation analysis.

How?

The students can either base their personas on their own perceptions and ideas, or on information that they gathered through observations, interviews, articles, blogs, web pages, statistics and the like. The students process and schematize this information into different personas, whose lives are portrayed trough stories, pictures, videos, music etc. A persona could for example include information about, where a fictional user lives; works or goes to school, his or her leisure activities and name, as to create a realistic and comprehensive picture.

Tips

The students build up scenarios upon their personas. As an example they might imagine that their personas are working in a company that wants to improve knowledge sharing between departments. When students put their personas into this or other contexts, it enables them to discuss and define the problem through the eyes of their fictitious persona. Thus, the students can combine this method with a fictitious user-journey (see user-journey).

Literature

Grudin, J., & Pruitt, J. (2002, January). Personas, participatory design and product development: An infrastructure for engagement. In PDC (pp. 144-152).