Personas in Real Life

Abstract

Personas is a method for modelling users used for the interaction design in a software project. It has gained a lot of popularity within the industry. However, the role personas should play is not always obvious even to the practitioners. The method is also used together with other methods, which presumably have an impact on each other. This thesis investigates how personas are interpreted within the context of Effect Management, a process used to improve the effectiveness when developing software solutions on an organisational level. The thesis suggests that in this context personas are appreciated as a communications medium, but not as much as a design tool. This is because Effect Management and personas overlap as design tools to the extent that workload of creating a design-worthy persona is difficult to motivate. It is also because personas and effect management have different perspectives on the user.