Personas with knowledge and cognitive process: tools for teaching conceptual design

Persona is a tool within User Centered Design principles to assist students to be mindful of the users of the system during the conceptual phase of the design. We conducted a series of empirical studies, involving over 200 information systems students who performed design activities, four groups of students were provided with four Personas authored to be different in knowledge and cognitive processes and a control group who received a list of requirements. We found that students\u27 performance, while designing to a Persona are as good as, or better than using the list of requirements. The students who were given one of the Personas thought of a user which had traits similar to the Personas\u27 traits but the students who received the list of requirements thought of themselves as users of the product. Our results indicate that Persona assists students to think of the target users during their design activity

Ibigkas!: The Iterative Development of a Mobile Collaborative Game for Building Phonemic Awareness and Vocabular

Filipino learners’ lack of English language proficiency is a major barrier to higher education opportunities and participation in high-value industries. Computer-based learning systems have the potential to increase educational quality, equity, and efficacy in the Global South. However, a key challenge is to design systems that are developmentally and socioculturally appropriate and engaging for the target learners. In this paper, we describe the design, development, and preliminary testing of Ibigkas!, a collaborative, mobile phone-based game designed to provide phonemic awareness and vocabulary building support to Filipino learners aged 10-12

Designing for one: how designing for one enriches the student design process

Designing for one is a form of design participation in which a designer works together with one individual. The result of this interaction is a bespoke design that is responsive to the needs, abilities, preferences and situation of the individual. Applied with design education, this research sought to understand the ways this approach impacted a) student learning, b) the generation of empathy and c) the traditional design educational space. This study involved six methods of inquiry for examining the impact of designing for one on the student experience: four Student Module Cases Studies, one expert design educator workshop with 21 participants, 28 student interviews, seven expert design educator interviews and included mapping (a method used within the workshop), observations and post analysis thick descriptions. In terms of student learning, the study identified seven key learning experiences that students had when designing for one, with the most prevalent being: Process (the students developed knowledge about the design process, research methodology and the act of designing), Design Skills (they learned about and applied specific skills related to their discipline), Soft-Design Skills (they developed understanding regarding using and incorporate soft-skills into their design process) and Interaction (they identified the value of the interaction between themselves and their participant). Regarding empathy, the study identified 11 factors that influence the forming of an empathetic relationship between designer and participant, resulting in a set of empathy factors that can be referred to when seeking to build relationships within design participation. In terms of impacting the routine design space, the study identified 11 variables that design educators can use to disrupt a traditional educational setup with the most important variables identified being participation with real users (bringing students in contact with real users) and the location of the module situation (taking the ‘classroom’ off site into a situation of use). By purposefully placing students within these individual situations of an ‘other’, the result is a form of design participation that emerges from the orchestrated relationship and the exchange. The result of this thesis, then, is the offering of designing for one as pedagogical approach that increases levels of complexity, planning, research and collaboration serving to complement existing design educational practice

On the margins: personhood and moral status in marginal cases of human rights

Most philosophical accounts of human rights accept that all persons have human rights. Typically, ‘personhood’ is understood as unitary and binary. It is unitary because there is generally supposed to be a single threshold property required for personhood (e.g. agency, rationality, etc.). It is binary because it is all-or-nothing: you are either a person or you are not. A difficulty with binary views is that there will typically be subjects, like children and those with dementia, who do not meet the threshold, and so who are not persons with human rights, on these accounts. It is consequently unclear how we ought to treat these subjects. This is the problem of marginal cases. I argue that we cannot resolve the problem of marginal cases if we accept a unitary, binary view of personhood. Instead, I develop a new non-binary personhood account of human rights, and defend two main claims. First, there are many, scalar properties, the having of which are conducive to personhood. Second, different subjects have different human rights depending on which of these properties they have, and what threats apply to them. On my view, and contra most existing accounts, most marginal cases have some degree of personhood and are entitled to some human rights

Teaching Design with Personas

The paper explores the effectiveness of persona-based design methods in HCI education. We describe the experiences of our students in learning, practicing, and using personas in a number of design contexts. From these experiences, we identify common patterns of use and misuse and characterize challenges in incorporating and using personas in the classroom. We conclude with advice on how to effectively teach design using personas.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe