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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