hello i'm jim jansen and i present this
paper use cases for design personas a
systematic review
and identification of new frontiers
uh for personas
uh it's my work done by myself and
co-authors listed here
this is uh the reference to the full
paper and i really encourage you to read
it
i'm
going to touch on the highlights here
but
the paper really presents
each of these steps in depth
and with a lot of details including some
future research for personas which i
don't interest in this do not address in
this presentation
so while we did
we reviewed 95 articles addressing
persona applications across also various
domains
uh we then presented along with other
things a three-stage design hierarchy of
persona usage
and we accessed the rss the trends uh
increasing trends of personas being used
for social good
rather than just design or commercial
purposes
and just a touch on personas there these
representations of real users they're
fictitious
but they take a lot of user customer
audience data and build it together and
something that is easily digestible
okay and usable and understand the
understandable representation of the
users
and so that
simplicity actually has a lot of
advantages in the
organizational settings design studies
commercial settings
well we found well uh these are some of
the highlights uh we have a three-stage
design hierarchy of persona usage
listed as listed here stage one is they
help organize information then stage two
they're adapted to our short-term tasks
and then stage three of usage
they are used for uh explicit long-term
goals of stakeholders
we've also found a great versatility in
persona usage and design
but there is a lack of standardization
of documenting these persona use cases
so that's really hindered
the research development and application
of personas
uh and finally uh surprisingly uh
given uh you know we're 40 years
into their usage
and the widespread assumption that
they're used in all
disciplines uh our our findings
challenge that they're actually
concentrating in a few disciplines and
they are not so much in others
the motivation we want to establish a
roadmap of best practices about
practitioners employee personas to
increase the value of design and then we
also want to highlight areas of interest
for those desiring to conduct persona
research
our research objectives
are here
we wanted to present how personas are
used across various domains
how they're used at different stages of
design
how they're evaluated okay
how their personas are used in
conjunction with other uh user-centered
design techniques
and then finally how personas can be
used for social good
the method uh we took a systematic uh
review approach
used three databases uh pulled several
hundred articles did an initial
screening identified 95 articles that
fit our criteria
and then we pulled out
these particular elements of each of
these articles for analysis
for domains the most popular domain was
software development
healthcare and higher education
as you can see the percentage-wise those
represent a sizable portion of the
articles
also sometimes the articles address
something that was cross domains like
maybe software development and higher
education or something like that
so sometimes you know they're
encountered in both domains
but yeah software development was by far
and away the highest usage
for design task uh conceptualization uh
was the top design task quickly followed
by uh prototyping uh most articles
employ personas in two different design
tasks with conceptualization prototyping
being the most common pair
and you can see the the various design
tasks and the task descriptions here and
the frequency that they're employed
in terms of impact in terms of when i
say impact measuring the impact of
personas
uh ethnographic methods were uh
far and away the most common and as a
mixed message researcher i i
specifically really think this is a
problem uh you know i i value the uh
qualitative approach i think it adds uh
great insights
but in terms of evaluation of a of a
method uh i think quantitative methods
are probably more applicable there so
this is certainly an area that
opened up to a wide variety of research
and even if you disagree with what i
just said
uh doing quantitative evaluations of
personas can be
valuable uh to even
uh in conjunction
with these more qualitative methods
in terms of
integration of personas with other
user-centered design techniques
scenarios were
far and away the most common but also
interviews prototyping and needs cards
were
quite frequently used also
so it appears that personas are are not
a standalone or not necessarily a
standalone but can be
used in conjunction and supplement and
be supplemented by
other design techniques
in terms of social good you know we
think it's the area where personas could
really uh have great impact
and make a contribution because there
are so many societal problems
and and
a better understanding of the
users or the
uh
those that are impacted
by social and political and cultural
issues i think this area where personas
can really help especially in
articulating those needs to to others
but uh healthcare uh and accessibility
were the two
most frequent
uh categories for where personas are
used in this regard
so what are some of the implications
software development uh the top domain
for personas
really a need for standardization okay
and how
the personas are used in the design
process
in terms of evaluation primarily
anecdotal primarily qualitative i think
some empirical testing could really add
some uh depth and rigor
to the evaluation of personas
and then certainly there's open areas
for conceptual work in mapping the
different areas social areas where
personas can add value
thank you very much please read the
paper and appreciate you listening to
the presentation please reach out thank
you