Understanding Users Through Three Types of Personas

Lene Nielsen, Marta Larusdottir, Lars Bo Larsen

    Publikation: Konference artikel i Proceeding eller bog/rapport kapitelKonferencebidrag i proceedingsForskningpeer review

    Abstract

    Personas is a suggested method to extend IT professionals' understanding of users and users’ needs. A common advantage expressed is that personas extend the IT professionals’ empathy for the users, but a disadvantage is that personas are typically defined at the start of a software project and gradually are forgotten, since there is little reference to the personas through the software development project. In this paper we report experiences of coaching IT professionals in defining agile user stories based on personas, called: Persona User Stories (PUS). The aim of these workshops, was to extend the usage of personas and thereby extend the IT professionals’ understanding of their users. In a research project with three companies, we coached teams of IT professionals in three-hour workshops with 76 participants in total. The workshops were conducted at each company using personas already defined by the IT professionals. The persona descriptions were based on three types of information: (a) assumptions, (b) secondary research, and (c) data specific to a project. Our findings show that personas based on assumptions result in the participants questioning the description of the personas and having difficulties in understanding the personas. For making the persona user stories (PUS), the participants used themselves more often as a reference when working with the assumption based personas, than the participants using the other two types of personas.
    OriginalsprogEngelsk
    TitelHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021
    RedaktørerC Ardito
    Antal sider18
    Vol/bind12933
    ForlagSpringer
    Publikationsdato30 aug. 2021
    Sider330-348
    ISBN (Trykt)978-3-030-85615-1
    ISBN (Elektronisk)978-3-030-85616-8
    DOI
    StatusUdgivet - 30 aug. 2021
    BegivenhedHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 : IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction - Bari, Bari, Italien
    Varighed: 25 aug. 202127 aug. 2021

    Konference

    KonferenceHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021
    LokationBari
    Land/OmrådeItalien
    ByBari
    Periode25/08/202127/08/2021
    NavnLecture Notes in Computer Science
    Vol/bind12933
    ISSN0302-9743

    Emneord

    • Personas
    • User stories
    • Persona user stories
    • Case study
    • Workshops
    • IT professionals

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