Designing the Introductory IS Course Using Student Personas: Lessons Learned from Product Design

The introductory information systems course has been a challenge to deliver for business school faculty members. One part of the challenge is to clearly understand the students who will take the class. An extension of user-centered design (UCD) called a persona has been used to gain understanding and develop empathy for target users/consumers of product design efforts. Extending the use beyond product design, personas were used to revise and design the introductory operations and information management class at a major western university. The use of personas led to a number of class innovations including the use of a blog, the selection of practitioner oriented book, and the use of recent students who had completed the class as recitation leaders. Preliminary results have included increased enrollments in advanced elective classes in operations and information management

The Use of the Delphi Method to Determine the Benefits of the Personas Method – An Approach to Systems Design

A persona represents a group of target users that share common behavioral characteristics. The personas method, an approach to systems design, has been receiving significant attention from practitioners. However, only anecdotal evidence currently exists for the effectiveness of personas. This research-in-progress, a Delphi study of personas experts, attempts to reach consensus on the benefits of incorporating personas into design projects. This study also lays the foundation for future research by identifying variables of interest, and building construct validity through the definitions of items given by the experts. Experimental studies will validate if groups of subjects that are provided with personas design more usable systems than groups that are given data on the target users in a non-persona form. Also, planned case studies will concentrate on studying the use of and effectiveness of personas in the organizational setting

A Review of the Literature on the Empathy Construct Using Cluster Analysis

Empathy plays a central role in human behavior and is a key aspect of social functioning. The extensive research on the empathy construct in fields such as psychology, social work, and education has revealed many positive aspects of empathy. Through the use of cluster analysis, this research takes a new approach to reviewing the literature on empathy and objectively identifies groups of empathy research. Next, this study relates the information systems (IS) discipline’s focus on empathy research through the projection of IS empathy paragraphs into those clusters, and identifies areas of empathy research that are currently being largely overlooked by the IS field. The use of cluster analysis and projection for conducting a literature review provides researchers with a more objective approach for reviewing relevant literature

Knowing You, Knowing Who, and Knowing What Counts: A Multi-Generational Conversation

People who have had the most impact on our lives are those who have seen some special trait or character in us and then nurture that special something. Gary Dickson has had that kind of impact on others. Gary also has left us with a discovery framework for survival in academia. Surviving academics must groom themselves for their careers through the use of knowledge that can be turned into action. Knowing yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, your field and its perception by other academics, key players both while in a Ph.D. program and in an academic position, success factors in the job market and on the road to tenure and promotion, your publication outlets, and how you personally react to criticism are all part of your desired knowledge package. But, knowledge is not enough. You must use your information system and knowledge base along with an action plan to reach your goals. Actions including but not limited to a balance in life, turning unstructured tasks into structured ones, and thinking beyond system boundaries all can guide you to be a survivor in academia. This conversation among Gary Dickson\u27s first Ph.D. student, a newly minted Ph.D. who Ken advised, and a current student of Ken\u27s, provides food for thought on building your knowledge base and some guides to actions that will aid your academic career

A Preliminary Examination of Using Personas to Enhance User-Centered Design

Organizations now routinely collect information about the needs of their consumers/users, but this information is not sufficiently utilized. This research investigates how encapsulating the user needs in a persona affects the resulting design decisions. Personas put a face on the target users and create a vivid design target by using a narrative, picture, and name. In our study, we examine whether personas help designers make more effective design decisions. We also focus on the roles of empathy and memory, and investigate whether personas introduce greater empathy into product design. The results suggest that personas lead to more effective designs when empathy for the persona is created. On the other hand, when the user needs are summarized in a tabular format, the participants must rely on memorization of the user information. The implications of the results and how follow-up studies will tackle unanswered questions are explored

Using personas to improve feature selectivity by facilitating empathy

This paper examines how the target users should be represented to improve the feature selectivity of designers. Specifically, this research investigates the utility of personas, a method for representing user needs through the use of a vivid, fictional character. We examine whether the persona representation helps designers focus their design choices on the needs of the target users without introducing extraneous features. We also test the role of empathy in the effectiveness of personas. In two experimental studies, we find support that a persona representation that facilitates empathy can help designers focus their design inferences on the target users. Taken as a whole, this research presents an initial step toward validating the impact of the personas and identifying factors that influence their utility.First author draf

Personas and user-centered design: How can personas benefit product design processes? Design Studies.

This paper investigates personas, an alternative method for representing and communicating customer needs. By using a narrative, picture, and name, a persona provides product designers with a vivid representation of the design target. Numerous benefits of incorporating personas into product design approaches have been suggested, but the present literature fails to identify the most significant and universal advantages of persona use. By incorporating expert opinion through the use of Delphi methodology, this research first examines the benefits of incorporating personas into design processes. After gaining consensus on the perceived importance of the individual benefits, this paper then elaborates on the most significant benefits of persona use and needed future research on the personas method

Using Personas to Understand the Needs and Goals of Institutional Repository Users

This study shares the results of an effort to understand the needs and goals of future institutional repository (IR) users at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB). Due to underutilization of IRs at other institutions, the University Libraries at UCB decided it was imperative that insight into users\u27 goals and needs of an IR be gained before design of the repository began. The libraries partnered with faculty and students with expertise in human-computer interaction to study user needs. The results of this study yielded personas describing different classes of potential IR users on university campuses, which can be used to guide IR architects in designing repositories that facilitate increased participation