INTERACT2009 Conference paper http://www.interact2009.org

1. Designing with Only Four People in
Mind?
A Case Study of Using Personas to Redesign a Work-Integrated Learning Support System
Amir Dotan, Neil Maiden, Valentina Lichtner
and Lola Germanovich
Centre for HCI Design

2. Centre for HCI Design
The Paper
1. A case study illustrating how personas were used in
a real world situation to engage project members with
user information during a 2-day workshop to redesign
APOSDLE (3rd Prototype)
2. The strengths and weaknesses of personas based on
our experience
3. The strengths and weaknesses of actively involving
stakeholders in creating and using personas

3. Centre for HCI Design
The APOSDLE project www.aposdle.tugraz.at
• Advanced Process- Oriented Self- Directed
Learning Environment
• A 48 months R&D integrated project involving
12 organisations from five countries (contract no.
IST-027023)
• Aims to support work-integrated learning by
providing people working in knowledge-
intensive industries the infrastructure needed to
acquire, understand and communicate
knowledge

4. Resources
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APOSDLE Prototype 2 Resources
Learning by doing: Typewriter
Requirement Analysis 1
Evaluation
Document X
Learning Events
How to evaluate
Example of Analysis
C++ in 4 Days
Day 1
Day 2
Personalised
(competencies)
and contextual
Knowledgeable Persons
(activities) Refine experts here
learning support Persons
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Robin Hood
Alka Selza
Steve Martin
Kartoffelpü Reh

5. Centre for HCI Design
Why Did We Turn to Personas?
1. A work-based formative evaluation of the 2nd
prototype highlighted various usability problems such
as:
• Ambiguous terminology (e.g. Learning Events,
Knowledge Artefacts, Learning Goals, Context)
• Unclear interaction and processes - (Where to
begin? What to do? Where is ‘search’?)
• Individual differences (e.g. The Learning Events did
not always fit the users’ needs and objectives)

6. Centre for HCI Design
Why Did We Turn to Personas?
2. International Multi-Disciplinary Consortium
3. Varying views, perceptions and understanding of
APOSDLE’s target audience – Lack of common
language to describe end users

7. Centre for HCI Design
Why Did We Turn to Personas?
4. Information about end users was provided in the
early requirements stage by stakeholders
representing future clients and empirical studies,
but was not visible throughout the project
5. Referring to users as Knowledge Workers,
Knowledge Seekers and Knowledgeable People
did not provide essential rich information about
the target audience and its work environment

8. Centre for HCI Design
Main Criticism of Personas (Chapman and Milham, 2006)
• Methodological weaknesses - Personas are
difficult or impossible to verify – Are they realistic
representation?
• Practical limitations - It is not always clear how the
personas are reconciled with other data and who is
responsible for interpreting them

9. Centre for HCI Design
Creating the APOSDLE Personas
• Empirical data (interviews, observations)
• Stakeholders representing APOSDLE’s target
clients contributing an initial set of personas
describing their employees based on a template
• Reason 1 - Validation – Getting the right personas
• Reason 2 - Time constraints

10. Centre for HCI Design
The Four APOSDLE Personas
Rigid work process Flexible work process
Eva – consultant
Senior employee
Pierre - mechanical engineer
Junior employee
Paul – Intern (Engineering) Lisa – Project assistant

11. Centre for HCI Design

12. Centre for HCI Design
Redesigning APOSDLE with Personas
• 2 Day workshop
• 4 Personas
• 21 participants (None have ever used personas)
Stage 1 – Familiarisation session – Get to know the personas
Stage 2 – Review prototype 2 from the personas’ point of view and consider redesign
solutions if necessary

13. Persona Familiarisation Session
General comments about each persona
Paul (the intern) is probably
question driven and requires
detailed knowledge. He carries
out a single task at a time Pierre (the senior engineer) is
probably more set in his ways .
He deals with processes,
simulations and calculations

14. Centre for HCI Design
Persona Familiarisation Session
• How do the personas perceive APOSDLE
Prototype 2?
• “What aspects of APOSDLE is Pierre more likely
to appreciate?”
• “What aspects of APOSDLE is Pierre less likely to
appreciate?”

15. Centre for HCI Design
Persona Familiarisation Session
• Participants extrapolate new Information about the
personas and APOSDLE
Eva would appreciate
being able to locate
experts using
APOSDLE
Eva will not use
APOSDLE’s process
view. Her work is less
about ‘ticking boxes’

16. Redesigning APOSDLE
To better suit the needs of the personas
“Interesting idea. Who do you imagine using this feature?
Eva? Paul? Lisa? Pierre?”

17. Addressing Practical Limitations of Personas
Stakeholders help interpret and use the personas
“Is this a feature a 48 year old senior engineer
in your company might use?”

18. Centre for HCI Design
Rapid Persona-Driven Prototyping During
the Workshop
Eva and Pierre
require quick and
unstructured access
to resources
Viewing the domain
elements could help
Paul get an overview
and explore the
domain

19. Rapid Persona-Driven Prototyping During
the Workshop
“Will Paul like this kind of thing?
I wonder if people will go through this process.
I can imagine Paul simply pressing ‘ask’ and
bypassing the form.”

20. Centre for HCI Design
Design Outcomes
• Learning Events in Prototype 2 could alienate
Pierre and Eva
Participant 5 (Programmer): The
Learning Events were created to
facilitate learning. I think we should
reflect on the four personas and see if
they have need for this information. We
are discussing low-level details and
terminology before addressing the
users’ real goals.

21. Centre for HCI Design
Optional explicit learning support for Paul in Prototype 3
Quick access to content for Eva and Pierre

22. Option to explore domain topics for all four
personas
More obvious search option for Pierre and Eva

23. Design Outcome
Resources
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Resources
Learning by doing: Typewriter
Requirement Analysis 1
Evaluation
Document X
Learning Events
How to evaluate
Example of Analysis
C++ in 4 Days
Day 1
Day 2
Knowledgeable Persons
Refine experts here
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Persons
Robin Hood
Alka Selza
Steve Martin
Kartoffelpü Reh
Prototype 2 - Before Personas Prototype 3 - After Personas

24. Centre for HCI Design
Strengths and Weaknesses of Personas
based on our experience
Strengths Weaknesses
•Focused the discussions on real people •Short life span – Had a strong impact
and real working environments during the first few hours of the discussions
•Helped project members from different and then their impact diminished
professional background to ‘get to know’ •This could be attributed to the
APOSDLE’s target audience stakeholders’ presence
•Ensured redesign ideas targeted end •Having to constantly ask participants to
users and did not merely reflect personal link their ideas to a persona became
preferences tedious and potentially annoying

25. Centre for HCI Design
Stakeholders’ Involvement
Positives Negatives
•Helped produce more valid •Despite a template and instructions,
personas that captured the work the style of the initial personas
routine and goals of real people provided varied
•Helped interpret the personas and •After a while, participants seemed
resolve disagreements - The to abandon the personas in favour of
personas had clear owners who asking the stakeholders directly if an
knew the people they represented idea could work or not

26. Centre for HCI Design
Conclusions
• There are obvious pros and cons to the persona
approach
• In our case we conclude the strengths outweighed
the weaknesses
• We found personas to be an effective way to
encapsulate and communicate user information so
it served as a reminder during discussions

27. Centre for HCI Design
Conclusions
• By combining initial persona descriptions
generated by stakeholders with our empirical data
we feel we were able to address to some degree
methodological weaknesses and practical
limitation of the tool expressed in the literature