The secret life of a persona : when the personal becomes private

• Some organizations fail to involve users in systems development due to a widespread organization, high workload or secrecy issues. A remedy against this situation could be the persona method in which users and main stakeholders as represented as fictitious characters. Personas help eliciting user needs and requirements, facilitate design choices and are an overall communication aid where users cannot be present. An important part of the persona method, as portrayed in literature, is the personal details that make the personas trustworthy and alive. In this paper we present two cases in which personas have been developed and used, but where the personal is scarce or even non-existent because of a dispersed organisation, the organisational culture and secrecy issues. The paper describes how the personas were developed, used and received and how the method was altered in order to work in these special circumstances.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Persona

Secrecy issues

Stakeholder

Systems development

User centred design

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)