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- Title
Drawing on Personas: How User Personas Affect Creativity.
- Authors
Lanius, Candice; Weber, Ryan; Spiegle, Jackie; Robinson, Joy; Potts, Robin
- Abstract
Purpose: While many industry professionals, including user-experience designers, create personas to represent their target users, debate still exists about whether personas really help organizations improve user-centered attitudes and product design. This study tested whether personas increase performance and empathy on a creativity task. Method: 172 participants completed a creativity task in which they were given seven minutes to draw a space alien. Participants drew aliens either for themselves, an unspecified author, or an author represented by a persona. Participants also completed a survey collecting their attitudes about the activity and alien drawings. Four coders then used a five-item rubric to evaluate the creativity of each drawing. Results: There were no differences in creativity scores for the alien drawings between the persona, self, and other author groups. However, people drawing for themselves and the persona author were more confident in their alien drawings and more willing to share them. Within the persona group, those participants who reported thinking about the persona while drawing had more positive feelings about the drawing and the author who would use it. Conclusion: While the persona did not result in more creative drawings, personas may increase confidence and user-centered attitudes among designers when actively used.
- Publication
Technical Communication, 2020, Vol 67, Issue 4, p49
- ISSN
0049-3155
- Publication type
Article