Studies in human-computer interaction recommend creating fewer than ten personas, based on stakeholders’ limitations to cognitively process and use personas. However, no existing studies offer empirical support for having fewer rather than more personas. Investigating this matter, thirty-seven participants interacted with five and fifteen personas using an interactive persona system, choosing one persona to design for. Our study results from eye-tracking and survey data suggest that when using interactive persona systems, the number of personas can be increased from the conventionally suggested ‘less than ten’, without significant negative effects on user perceptions or task performance, and with the positive effects of increasing engagement with the personas, having a more diverse representation of the end-user population, as well as users accessing personas from more varied demographic groups for a design task. Using the interactive persona system, users adjusted their information processing style by spending less time on each persona when presented with fifteen personas, while still absorbing a similar amount of information than with five personas, implying that more efficient information processing strategies are applied with more personas. The results highlight the importance of designing interactive persona systems to support users’ browsing of more personas.

In this research, we investigate if and how more photos than a single headshot can heighten the level of information provided by persona profiles. We conduct eye-tracking experiments and qualitative interviews with variations in the photos: a single headshot, a headshot and images of the persona in different contexts, and a headshot with pictures of different people representing key persona attributes. The results show that more contextual photos significantly improve the information end users derive from a persona profile; however, showing images of different people creates confusion and lowers the informativeness. Moreover, we discover that choice of pictures results in various interpretations of the persona that are biased by the end users' experiences and preconceptions. The results imply that persona creators should consider the design power of photos when creating persona profiles.

To more effectively convey relevant information to end users of persona profiles, we conducted a user study consisting of 29 participants engaging with three persona layout treatments. We were interested in confusion engendered by the treatments on the participants, and conducted a within-subjects study in the actual work environment, using eye-tracking and talk-aloud data collection. We coded the verbal data into classes of informativeness and confusion and correlated it with fixations and durations on the Areas of Interests recorded by the eye-tracking device. We used various analysis techniques, including Mann-Whitney, regression, and Levenshtein distance, to investigate how confused users differed from non-confused users, what information of the personas caused confusion, and what were the predictors of confusion of end users of personas. We consolidate our various findings into a confusion ratio measure, which highlights in a succinct manner the most confusing elements of the personas. Findings show that inconsistencies among the informational elements of the persona generate the most confusion, especially with the elements of images and social media quotes. The research has implications for the design of personas and related information products, such as user profiling and customer segmentation.

The persona method is gaining widespread use and support. Many researchers have reported from single cases and novel domains how they have used the method. Few have conducted literature studies in order to identify and discuss the different understandings of the method. Fewer still have reported on ethnographic studies of practice. This paper falls within the last category, reporting on a study on how practitioners in Denmark use the method, and their perceptions of benefits and challenges when using the method. Finally, different casts of personas obtained from the involved companies are analyzed. The findings are compared to reported studies of practice. Contrary to the existing findings the study reports that the method is well integrated into existing practices.