In the early days of digital technology development, design was done 'for', 'with' or 'by' the users based on the assumption that users were real people. Today 'users' have become a component in mass-market production and are seen as 'customers', rather than people. Still designers need to address use, and personas have been introduced for this purpose. The paper uses research on user participation and research-based personas from the eGov+ project to discuss whether personas help designers engage with users. In this project, design was carried out in the domain of municipal services through involvement of clerks, management and citizens from three different municipalities. Through four cases we discuss if applying personas in participatory design settings is productive to designers' understanding of users' use situations. Does deployment of personas bring designers closer to the actual use situation? In which ways do personas help design for, with or by the users? Do personas support participatory design?
Participatory Design Conference - Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Duration: 12 Aug 2012 → 16 Aug 2012 Conference number: 12
Conference
Conference
Participatory Design Conference
Number
12
Location
Roskilde University
Country
Denmark
City
Roskilde
Period
12/08/2012 → 16/08/2012
Bibliographical note
Title of the vol.: Proceedings of the 12th Participatory Design Conference: Research Papers / ed. by Kim Halskov, Hike Winschiers-Theophilus, Yanki Lee, Jesper Simonsen, Keld Bødker. ISBN 978-1-4503-0846-5