Information Design for Personas in Four Professional Domains of User Experience Design, Healthcare, Market Research, and Social Media Strategy

Practitioners in user-centric industries have increasingly recognized the applicability of personas. However, the methods used to create personas in different domains remain inconsistent and unsystematic. We analyzed 51 studies focused on designing personas for professional purposes and found the practice most prevalent in the user experience design, healthcare, market research, and social media strategy domains. Within these domains, user experience design personas are characterized by their focus on user activity goals, health personas on medical patients’ physical symptoms, market research personas on customers’ lifestyles, and social media strategy personas on interactions within and between online communities. We identify and compare the elements in the personas. Based on these, we provide guidelines for professionals interested in developing personas for understanding barriers to positive user experience, recruiting users, and building online communities, including how to represent persona details related to lifestyle and health, contexts of product usage, and scaling of online data

Accentuating patient values in shared decision-making:A mixed methods development of an online value clarification tool and communication training in the context of early phase clinical cancer trials

Objective: In the shared decision-making (SDM) process for potential early phase clinical cancer trial participation, value clarification is highly recommended. However, exploration and discussion of patient values between patients and oncologists remains limited. This study aims to develop an SDM-supportive intervention, consisting of a preparatory online value clarification tool (OnVaCT) and a communication training. Methods: The OnVaCT intervention was developed and pilot-tested by combining theoretical notions on value clarification, with interview studies with patients and oncologists, focus groups with patient representatives and oncologists, and think aloud sessions with patients, following the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework for complex interventions. These human-centered methodologies enabled a user-centered approach at every step of the development process of the intervention. Results: This study shows relevant patient values and oncologists’ perspectives on value exploration and discussion in daily practice. This has been combined with theoretical considerations into the creation of characters based on real-life experiences of patients in the OnVaCT, and how the tool is combined with a communication training for oncologists to improve SDM.</p

Strengths and Weaknesses of Persona Creation Methods:Guidelines and Opportunities for Digital Innovations

Persona is a technique for enhancing user understanding and improving the user-centered design of digital products. Persona creation has traditionally been divided into Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods approaches. However, no literature systematically contrasts the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches. We review the literature to map the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches and evaluate the potential of personas for the domain of digital innovation. We provide insights for better creation and use of personas by both researchers and practitioners, especially those that are new to personas, deploying personas in a new domain, or familiar with only one of the persona creation approaches

Accentuating patient values in shared decision-making:A mixed methods development of an online value clarification tool and communication training in the context of early phase clinical cancer trials

Objective: In the shared decision-making (SDM) process for potential early phase clinical cancer trial participation, value clarification is highly recommended. However, exploration and discussion of patient values between patients and oncologists remains limited. This study aims to develop an SDM-supportive intervention, consisting of a preparatory online value clarification tool (OnVaCT) and a communication training. Methods: The OnVaCT intervention was developed and pilot-tested by combining theoretical notions on value clarification, with interview studies with patients and oncologists, focus groups with patient representatives and oncologists, and think aloud sessions with patients, following the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework for complex interventions. These human-centered methodologies enabled a user-centered approach at every step of the development process of the intervention. Results: This study shows relevant patient values and oncologists’ perspectives on value exploration and discussion in daily practice. This has been combined with theoretical considerations into the creation of characters based on real-life experiences of patients in the OnVaCT, and how the tool is combined with a communication training for oncologists to improve SDM

Know thy eHealth user: Development of biopsychosocial personas from a study of older adults with heart failure

BACKGROUND: Personas are a canonical user-centered design method increasingly used in health informatics research. Personas-empirically-derived user archetypes-can be used by eHealth designers to gain a robust understanding of their target end users such as patients. OBJECTIVE: To develop biopsychosocial personas of older patients with heart failure using quantitative analysis of survey data. METHOD: Data were collected using standardized surveys and medical record abstraction from 32 older adults with heart failure recently hospitalized for acute heart failure exacerbation. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed on a final dataset of n=30. Nonparametric analyses were used to identify differences between clusters on 30 clustering variables and seven outcome variables. RESULTS: Six clusters were produced, ranging in size from two to eight patients per cluster. Clusters differed significantly on these biopsychosocial domains and subdomains: demographics (age, sex); medical status (comorbid diabetes); functional status (exhaustion, household work ability, hygiene care ability, physical ability); psychological status (depression, health literacy, numeracy); technology (Internet availability); healthcare system (visit by home healthcare, trust in providers); social context (informal caregiver support, cohabitation, marital status); and economic context (employment status). Tabular and narrative persona descriptions provide an easy reference guide for informatics designers. DISCUSSION: Personas development using approaches such as clustering of structured survey data is an important tool for health informatics professionals. We describe insights from our study of patients with heart failure, then recommend a generic ten-step personas development process. Methods strengths and limitations of the study and of personas development generally are discussed

How to Create Personas : Three Persona Creation Methodologies with Implications for Practical Employment

Background: Personas are a technique for enhanced understanding of users and customers to improve the user-centered design of systems and products. Their creation can be categorized using three persona creation methodologies: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods. Despite the apparent differences in these methodologies, no previous review has systemically compared and contrasted the strengths and weaknesses of each of these methodologies for persona development. Method: This manuscript maps and navigates persona literature to identify the benefits and challenges of these three persona creation methodologies. Furthermore, the strategies and opportunities of the different methodologies are presented. Results: The results summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three principal persona creation methodologies and offer suggestions of the benefits of their employment. Conclusion: In conclusion, we offer insights into the construction and usage of personas for practitioners and researchers, and we propose a framework to determine which persona creation methodology is most suitable for a given context.© 2022 by the Association for Information Systems. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and full citation on the first page. Copyright for components of this work owned by others than the Association for Information Systems must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior specific permission and/or fee. Request permission to publish from: AIS Administrative Office, P.O. Box 2712 Atlanta, GA, 30301-2712 Attn: Reprints, or via email from [email protected]=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

How to Create Personas: Three Persona Creation Methodologies with Implications for Practical Employment

Background: Personas are a technique for enhanced understanding of users and customers to improve the user-centered design of systems and products. Their creation can be categorized using three persona creation methodologies: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods. Despite the apparent differences in these methodologies, no previous review has systemically compared and contrasted the strengths and weaknesses of each of these methodologies for persona development. Method: This manuscript maps and navigates persona literature to identify the benefits and challenges of these three persona creation methodologies. Furthermore, the strategies and opportunities of the different methodologies are presented. Results: The results summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three principal persona creation methodologies and offer suggestions of the benefits of their employment. Conclusion: In conclusion, we offer insights into the construction and usage of personas for practitioners and researchers, and we propose a framework to determine which persona creation methodology is most suitable for a given context. Keywords: Algorithmically-Generated Personas, Persona Analytics, Persona Science

How Does Personification Impact Ad Performance and Empathy? An Experiment with Online Advertising

This research explores the value of personas for supporting professional advertisers to design adverts for social media. We test if a personified user group (PUG), when provided to online ad designers, results in better ad performance than when using a non-personified user group (NUG) that had no face picture or name. Our experiment has 30 participants that created Facebook ads using both PUG and NUG. We found that using PUG did increase advertising click performance of ads created by people who are more experienced with ads and personas. Moreover, an analysis of the ad texts showed that the use of PUG increased the empathy of the created ads, supporting the foundational empathy benefit cited in HCI literature. However, the use of PUG did not significantly increase purchase intent. The results imply that using PUG for online ad design evokes more empathy and improves click-through performance. More empathetic ads can have a positive impact on social media users, given that they appear to increase relevance

How to Create Personas: Three Persona Creation Methodologies with Implications for Practical Employment

Background: Personas are a technique for enhanced understanding of users and customers to improve the user-centered design of systems and products. Their creation can be categorized using three persona creation methodologies: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods. Despite the apparent differences in these methodologies, no previous review has systemically compared and contrasted the strengths and weaknesses of each of these methodologies for persona development.Method: This manuscript maps and navigates persona literature to identify the benefits and challenges of these three persona creation methodologies. Furthermore, the strategies and opportunities of the different methodologies are presented.Results: The results summarize the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three principal persona creation methodologies and offer suggestions of the benefits of their employment.Conclusion: In conclusion, we offer insights into the construction and usage of personas for practitioners and researchers, and we propose a framework to determine which persona creation methodology is most suitable for a given context.</p