Personas: From theory to practices

Abstract

Persona is a technique being used by practicing designers in interaction design. Existing research presents the ways personas should/could be used, or report new efforts of making good use of the persona concept. Comparing to the primary idea of persona, this paper explores some manners with which practitioners actually utilize persona in their work, which has not been emphasized in-depth in current literatures. Our findings provide an initial step showing how practitioners in a creative way develop various usages of personas in practice. We believe this research not only expands the understanding of personas in design, but also gives insights about how practicing designers adapt and make design "tools" their own.