A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian locales

Persona is a tool broadly used in technology design to support communicational interactions between designers and users. Different Persona types and methods have evolved mostly in the Global North, and been partially deployed in the Global South every so often in its original User-Centred Design methodology. We postulate persona conceptualizations are expected to differ across cultures. We demonstrate this with an exploratory-case study on user-created persona co-designed with four Namibian ethnic groups: ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and Khoisan. We follow a hermeneutic inquiry approach to discern cultural nuances from diverse human conducts. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby for each ethnic group results emerge in unalike fashions, viewpoints, recounts and storylines. This paper ultimately argues User-Created Persona as a potentially valid approach for pursuing cross-cultural depictions of personas that communicate cultural features and user experiences paramount to designing acceptable and gratifying technologies in dissimilar locales

Reconceptualising Personas Across Cultures: Archetypes, Stereotypes & Collective Personas in Pastoral Namibia

The paucity of projects where persona is the research foci and a lack of consensus on this artefact keep many reticent about its purpose and value. Besides crafting personas is expected to differ across cultures, which contrasts the advancements in Western theory with studies and progress in other sites. We postulate User-Created Personas reveal specific characteristics of situated contexts by allowing laypeople to design persona artefacts in their own terms. Hence analysing four persona sessions with an ethnic group in pastoral Namibia –ovaHerero– brought up a set of fundamental questions around the persona artefact regarding stereotypes, archetypes, and collective persona representations: (1) to what extent user depictions are stereotypical or archetypal? If stereotypes prime (2) to what degree are current personas a useful method to represent end-users in technology design? And, (3) how can we ultimately read accounts not conforming to mainstream individual persona descriptions but to collectives

Co-Designing Personas for User Experience and Engagement in Automation

The aim of this workshop is to engage in co-design of personas to explore the interplay of autonomous technologies with user experi ence and engagement. Automating a process that is embedded into people’s everyday lives and activities will surely impact their expe rience. In a time where there is strong push towards more and more automation in our daily life, the workshop will explore the value of co-design in bringing to the fore the opportunities and issues of such trend on users’ experiences and engagements in multiple con texts such as work, health, entertainment and learning. Through the co-design of personas in future scenarios of automation the work shop will concretely identify valuable automation design goals for user experience and engagement drawing on participants’ knowl edge from industry projects and academic research.Tree concrete outcomes from the workshop are the following:info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Co-designing smart home technology with people with dementia or Parkinson's disease

Involving users is crucial to designing technology successfully, especially for vulnerable users in health and social care, yet detailed descriptions and critical reflections on the co-design process, techniques and methods are rare. This paper introduces the PERCEPT (PERrsona-CEntred Participatory Technology) approach for the co-design process and we analyse and discuss the lessons learned for each step in this process. We applied PERCEPT in a project to develop a smart home toolset that will allow a person living with early stage dementia or Parkinson's to plan, monitor and self-manage his or her life and well-being more effectively. We present a set of personas which were co-created with people and applied throughout the project in the co-design process. The approach presented in this paper will enable researchers and designers to better engage with target user groups in co-design and point to considerations to be made at each step for vulnerable users

User-created personas: a four case multi-ethnic study of persona artefact co-design in pastoral and Urban Namibia with ovaHerero, Ovambo, ovaHimba and San communities

A persona is an artefact widely used in technology design to aid communicational processes between designers, users and other stakeholders involved in projects. Persona originated in the Global North as an interpretative portrayal of a group of users with commonalities. Persona lacks empirical research in the Global South, while projects appearing in the literature are often framed under the philosophy of User-Centred Design –this indicates they are anchored in western epistemologies. This thesis postulates persona depictions are expected to differ across locales, and that studying differences and similarities in such representations is imperative to avoid misrepresentations that in turn can lead to designerly miscommunications, and ultimately to unsuitable technology designs. The importance of this problematic is demonstrated through four exploratory case studies on persona artefacts co-designed with communities from four Namibian ethnicities, namely ovaHerero, ovaHimba, Ovambo and San. Findings reveal diverse self-representations whereby results for each ethnicity materialise in different ways, recounts and storylines: romanticised persona archetypes versus reality with ovaHerero; collective persona representations with ovaHimba; individualised personas with Ovambo, although embedded in narratives of collectivism and interrelatedness with other personas; and renderings of two contradictory personas of their selves with a group of San youth according to either being on their own (i.e. inspiring and aspirational) or mixed with other ethnic groups (i.e. ostracised). This thesis advocates for User-Created Personas (UCP) as a potentially valid tactic and methodology to iteratively pursue conceptualisations of persona artefacts that are capable to communicate localised nuances critical to designing useful and adequate technologies across locales: Methodologies to endow laypeople to co-design persona self-representations and the results and appraisals provided are this thesis’ main contribution to knowledge

Personas in user-centered design of university websites

This thesis is focused on multicultural user personas as a method to design university websites with the user in mind. The relevance of the topic is stressed by the launch of Tampere3, Tampere higher education community which makes for a merger between the University of Tampere, Tampere University of Technology and Tampere University of Applied Sciences. The accent on cultural components in student persona descriptions is derived from the importance of intercultural competence. Since university websites are significant in promoting studying abroad to students, the way the website introduces its study options is crucial. The thesis is an exploratory qualitative study. Both Finnish and international students were engaged into focus groups for Tampere3 website user personas creation. As a result, I learnt what the personas should be to reflect various students’ needs, goals, motivations and frustrations. Generally, there is no contradiction between Finnish and international students as users of the university website. In final persona descriptions their cultural backgrounds were not attributed more importance than their academic status. Besides, I was interested if the personas could be approved by developers’ team in the process of designing of Tampere3 website. An interview and a questionnaire were used as developers’ feedback collection instruments. The findings show that applying personas could have changed at least the process, if not the results of the team’s work. Although the team considered the method at the beginning and created personas, these intentions were not enough to make them work. Personas were not rejected deliberately, but the motivation to use them was not enough to adhere to the method throughout the project. Few conclusions can be drawn with the findings: apparently, a project team needs to have more resources (time, efforts, motivation) to make use of personas as compared to dozens of other methods. However, it neither disproves personas’ effectiveness when they are applied properly nor means that other methods yield better results. The lack of motivation to use the method took place because focusing on the users was not the main priority the team had. The methods the team chose corresponded to their possibilities to invest into the user experience

Telling stories with personas

Even though the persona method is a well-known tool in the Human-Technology Interaction field for knowing users and their goals, tasks and environments, there are varying opinions about how personas should be developed and used. Many agree that combining personas with scenarios and user stories is useful, but scenarios and user stories can also be defined and used in various ways. The purpose of my master's thesis is to examine with a literature review different ways to develop and use personas together with scenarios and user stories. My thesis aims to gain a broad picture of the topic rather than confirm one, single perspective. I will search for sources in multiple places since quantitative research alone cannot provide complete enough answers to my research questions. I have divided personas into four types based on my literature review. Manual, semi-automatic and automatic personas are based on mostly user research, but they vary on how many steps in their development are done manually. Expert personas are based on knowledge gathered from stakeholders, literature and other experts. Designers should decide the type of persona based on the purpose of the project and available data and resources. The most important elements in persona description are a photo, name, background information, goals, pain points and story. All personas in the project should be comparable by using the same elements in persona descriptions and same layout in persona documents. Deciding what sources are included in a literature review and how extensively new sources are searched for are always subjective decisions. Another limitation of my thesis is that it does not cover visual design methods, such as storyboards or user journeys. There is some academic research about personas, scenarios and user stories, but knowledge about this topic could be broadened and deepened by conducting more research on the effectiveness, popularity and usage of these methods. Comparisons of practices between countries and companies would also be interesting