An Introduction to the Persona Concept and Its Application in Practice
An Introduction to the Persona Concept and Its Application in Practice
A persona is a description of a fictitious individual that encapsulates relevant traits of potential users of some proposed software application, such as their mindset, behaviour, goals, and motivations. Although the concept was initially introduced to support the definition of more human-centred system requirements, it has also proven effective both in design and actual development activities.
In this two-part presentation, we first explain the broader category of problems that personas are intended to address, and a brief explanation of how personas can achieve that goal. This is followed by a general definition of the persona concept, and explanation of where and how it can be used (illustrated by an example taken from real-world practice). This part concludes with a high-level summary of both benefits and potential pitfalls of the concept. The second part of the presentation takes a more in-depth view, focusing specifically on the use of personas in Requirements Engineering. This is based on the feedback received from a detailed interview study of practitioners in industry. The results of this study include a taxonomy of personas that can be used by requirements engineers, recommendations for relevant human factors to be included when defining a persona, as well as specifications of persona definition templates intended to assist practitioners, and which could also serve as a basis for potential persona definition tools.
Based on the following work:
Karolita, Devi & McIntosh, Jennifer & Kanij, Tanjila & Grundy, John & Obie, Humphrey. (2023). Use of personas in Requirements Engineering: A systematic mapping study. Information and Software Technology. 162. 107264. 10.1016/j.infsof.2023.107264.
Karolita, D.; Grundy, J.; Kanij, T.; Obie, H. and McIntosh, J. (2023). What's in a Persona? A Preliminary Taxonomy from Persona Use in Requirements Engineering. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - ENASE; ISBN 978-989-758-647-7; ISSN 2184-4895, SciTePress, pages 39-51. DOI: 10.5220/0011708500003464
Karolita, D.; Grundy, J.; Kanij, T.; Obie, H. and McIntosh, J. (2023). What should be in a persona for use in Requirements Engineering. (Under review)
About the speakers
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University
Bran Selić is the President of Malina Software Corp., a Canadian company that provides software consulting services to corporate clients and governments worldwide. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Software Engineering at the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. Bran has more than 50 years of industrial experience involving the design and realization of large-scale industrial software systems. He has pioneered the development and application of advanced model-based software engineering methods and technologies, as well as leading the definition of several related international standards. In 2022, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Mälardalen University in Sweden.
PhD student at HumaniSE Lab, Monash University
Devi's research focuses on the use of personas in Requirements Engineering (RE). Coming from Indonesia, she has been an academic for more than 10 years. Grateful for the opportunity, she embarked on her PhD journey at Monash University in 2020, made possible by the Australia Awards scholarship. During her PhD tenure, Devi has the privilege of contributing to prestigious journals and conferences with her publications on personas in RE. In addition, since 2021, she has had the honour of serving as a Teaching Associate at Monash University reflecting her commitment to both learning and sharing knowledge within academia.
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