Description
During the last decade, the persona technique has been used in interface design practices to put user needs and preferences at the center of all development decisions. Persona development teams draw on qualitative data, quantitative data, or a combination of both to develop personas that are representative of the target users. Despite the benefits of both methods, qualitative methods are mostly limited by cognitive capabilities of the experts, whereas quantitative methods lack richness. To gain the advantages of both methods, this paper suggests a mixed-method approach to create user personas based on the pattern of affordances they actualize, rather than merely the actions they take. It enriches personas by referring to the purposes fulfilled through affordance actualizations, and grounds personas in readily available objective log data. This study illustrates the practical value of the proposed methodology by empirically creating student personas using the Moodle learning management system.
Recommended Citation
Mesgari, Mostafa; Okoli, Chitu; and Ortiz de Guinea, Ana, "Affordance-based User Personas : A mixed-method Approach to Persona Development" (2015). AMCIS 2015 Proceedings. 1.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2015/HCI/GeneralPresentations/1
Affordance-based User Personas : A mixed-method Approach to Persona Development
During the last decade, the persona technique has been used in interface design practices to put user needs and preferences at the center of all development decisions. Persona development teams draw on qualitative data, quantitative data, or a combination of both to develop personas that are representative of the target users. Despite the benefits of both methods, qualitative methods are mostly limited by cognitive capabilities of the experts, whereas quantitative methods lack richness. To gain the advantages of both methods, this paper suggests a mixed-method approach to create user personas based on the pattern of affordances they actualize, rather than merely the actions they take. It enriches personas by referring to the purposes fulfilled through affordance actualizations, and grounds personas in readily available objective log data. This study illustrates the practical value of the proposed methodology by empirically creating student personas using the Moodle learning management system.