Purpose Personas are lifelike characters that are driven by potential or real users’ personal goals and experiences when interacting with a product. Personas support user-centered design by focusing on real users’ needs. However, the use of personas in educational research and design requires certain adjustments from its original use in human-computer interface design. This paper aims to propose a process of creating personas from phenomenographic studies, which helps us create data-grounded personas effectively. Design/methodology/approach Personas have features that can help address design problems in educational contexts. The authors compare the use of personas with other common methodologies in education research, including phenomenology and phenomenography. Then, this study presents a six-step process of building personas using phenomenographic study as follows: articulate a design problem, collect user data, assemble phenomenographic categories, build personas, check personas and solve the design problem using personas. The authors illustrate this process with two examples, including the redesign of a professional development website and an undergraduate research program design. Findings The authors find that personas are valuable tools for educational design websites and programs. Phenomenography can productively help educational designers and researchers build sets of personas following the process the authors propose. Originality/value The use and method of personas in educational contexts are scarce and vague. Using the example contexts, the authors provide educational designers and researchers a clear method of creating personas that are relatable and applicable for their design problems.
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Using Personas with Visual Impairments to Explore the Design of an Accessible Self-Driving Vehicle Human-Machine Interface
Recent reports have suggested that most self-driving vehicle technology being developed is not currently
accessible to users with disabilities. We purport that this problem may be at least partially attributable to
knowledge gaps in practice-oriented user-centered design research. Missing, we argue, are studies that
demonstrate the practical application of user-centered design methodologies in capturing the needs of users
with disabilities in the design of automotive systems specifically. We have investigated user-centered
design, specifically the use of personas, as a methodological tool to inform the design of a self-driving
vehicle human-machine interface for blind and low vision users. We then explore the use of these derived
personas in a series of participatory design sessions involving visually impaired co-designers. Our findings
suggest that a robust, multi-method UCD process culminating with persona development may be effective
in capturing the conceptual model of persons with disabilities and informing the design of automotive system.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1849924
- PAR ID:
- 10328671
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
- ISSN:
- 1071-1813
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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