Physicists engage with the public to varying degrees at different stages of
their careers. However, their public engagement covers many activities, events,
and audiences, making their motivations and professional development needs not
well understood. As part of ongoing efforts to build and support community in
the informal physics space, we conducted interviews with physicists with a
range of different experiences in public engagement. We use personas
methodology and self-determination theory to articulate their public engagement
motivation, challenges, and needs. We present our set of three personas: the
physicist who engages in informal physics for self-reflection, the physicist
who wants to spark interest and understanding in physics, and the physicist who
wants to provide diverse role models to younger students and inspire them to
pursue a STEM career. Needs covered a range of resources including science
communication training, community building among informal physics
practitioners, and mechanisms to recognize, elevate and value informal physics.
By bringing user-centered design methodology to a new topical area of physics
education research, we expand our understanding of motivations and needs of
practitioners in physics public engagement. Therefore, departments,
organizations and institutions could draw upon the personas developed to
consider the ways to better support physicists in their respective environment.Comment: 9 pages; preliminary portions of some of this analysis appeared in
PERC 2022; submitted to PhysRevPE