Design Research / Article 1. Jan. 2009, HCI Vistas Vol-V Author: Dr. Lene Nielsen

Introduction

This experiment originates from a comment posted on the forum connected to Journal of the HCI Vistas. Here Dinesh Katre wrote; I have always found it difficult to visualize or understand the characters illustrated in the books of P. G. Woodhouse because all are British personalities and I have not lived in Briton so long to understand these personalities as they are quite culture specific. (29-01-08). This made me wonder how personas descriptions are perceived and whether culture influences the perception. From this a simple search on Google scholar for literature on personas method and perception began. The search showed no articles on the subject. A similar search for personas method and culture gives several hits on how the persona method can affect organizational culture, hits on how to consider data from different cultures, but none that takes into consideration how different cultures perceive personas descriptions and what to take into consideration when developing personas perceived by readers from different cultures.

A persona is fictitious user constructed from different forms of field data. The data can originate from a combination of questionnaires, interviews, observations, probes etc. The designer uses the persona to imagine the end user’s design preferences and to imagine the needs that the future design can solve. This is done by writing stories “ scenarios “ about how the persona uses the future system. This enables the designer to explore future possibilities in an easily accessible way and in a format that is easy to change.

A personas description is not just any kind of document, but differentiates from other documents, as it is a description that is aimed at a known reader (the designer), who is distinctively different from the persona it portrays. The portrait will evoke identification in the reader, so the reader can imagine and understand the persona from the description and can, with this method, make informed design decisions.

Differences in Culture

In recent years cultural aspects has come to play a significant role when discussion interface design and evaluation methods. In the following I will briefly present the work of the cognitive psychologist Nisbett [2] who argues that there is a difference between how people perceive objects and situations related to the region from which they originate. Nisbett argues that Easterners (Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese) tend to think holistic, are more likely to attend to backgrounds, are more likely to expect change than Westerners, are more likely to group objects in thematic relations, and deal with contradictions finding truth in both sides. Westerners (Europeans and Americans) think analytic, are more likely to attend to objects, group according to taxonomies, and tend to reject one side of contradictions.

In this experiment it is especially the holistic versus the analytic thinking and grouping in themes rather than according to taxonomies that might be in play. In connection to personas descriptions the question becomes; how different are the categories we use to perceive a description?

The Experiment

I took a persona description of an online manager from a business project for the Danish company Traceworks. It was translated into English and all mentions of name and living place were removed (see app. 1). From my personal network I asked students and professionals to do as follows:
1. Read the personas description presented below
2. Give the persona a name
3. On the Internet, find a photo that matches the description
4. Describe why you have chosen the photo
5. Before the 1st of June return the name, the photo and the explanation directly to me.

From each of the countries India, China and Denmark I got three replies: five male and three women, all familiar with the personas method. The participants are distributed evenly between students and professionals. In the following I will analyze the response.

Analysis

Strategies
In the accounts for the choice of photo there seems to be two strategies at play; either interpreting or looking for clues in the description:

• Interpreting the text and using the interpretation as explanation for the choice of photo ‘I don’t know why but I tend to associate obesity with reluctance to new technology mindset. Don’t ask me why!’(Indian informant 3). Information Technology means he would earn more money than average (Chinese informant 1).
• Finding a specific description in the text that serves as explanation for the choice of photo. She has young children and therefore she could not be old (Danish informant 2). He has no time to do much exercise, so he may be a little fat (Chinese informant 2).

Table 1 below shows each of the participants chosen strategy. The Danish informant 1 chose to describe the choice with a personal knowledge of people employed in advertising: I assume I know the person, because of my previous career and involvement in advertising. I, from the get go, had an idea of how I presumed this person to look, since to me we all looked alike at the agency after a while. (Danish informant 1).

Tabel 1. Perception strategies

Perception based on interpretation	Perception based on description	Perception based on former knowledge
China 1, China 3, India 3	China 2, DK 2, DK 3, India 2, India 3	Dk 1

Most participants used the strategy of finding cues in the text. Interestingly none of the Danes used interpretation as an overall strategy.

Almost all of the photos showed a person in suit, even the only photo of a female. Three from India and China chose photos of western business people, while the rest chose photos of locals. The Indian informant 1 chose both a westerner and a local looking and explained that in the text is mentioned: ‘X is 42 and married, with a son age 3 and a daughter age 7′ an Indian man would not have so young children at 42, this points to a westerner.

The photos from two of the Danes looked very Danish while the photo from the Danish female shows a woman, not very Danish in expression. All of the Danes picked photos of younger people than the other informants did.

Tabel 2. Photo contents

Photos of foreign culture	Photos of local culture
China 1, 2, India (1) 2, DK 2	China 3, India 1, 3, DK 1, 2, 3

Tabel 3. Photos arranged according to informant’s country

None of the Danes interpreted the text, but rather found cues in the text. Not that this experiment have any statistical significance, but it might correlate to Nisbetts [2] findings of Easterners more prone to holistic thinking than Westerners.
Other areas seem to create a shared understanding, regardless of culture as there seems to be a united, but also stereotypical understanding of how a business person looks.

Conclusion

This experiment does not show huge cultural differences among the participants. The study is small and further studies are needed to show if personas descriptions are perceived differently in different cultures. Another study with an expectation of larger differences, e.g. a description of a female consumer, might show other findings.

The experiment does show that there are different strategies when perceiving the written descriptions.
The experiment also shows how easily it is to create implicit knowledge in the description, in this case where the age of the persona and the age of children communicates a Westerner.

It also shows how easy it is to create a stereotypical image of the user. As I have written elsewhere, stereotypes prevent engagement [1] and in personas descriptions it is recommended to write ’rounded’ character descriptions, but this leads to another discussion.

Acknowledgement

I want to thank the CultUsab project and the Chinese, Danish, and Indian participants.

Appendix 1

The personas description:
X, manager of online marketing.
X is 42 and married, with a son age 3 and a daughter age 7. X lives in a house a bit outside the capital and commutes to and from work.
At work, X likes to wear formal clothes, but not too formal.  X tries to do a bit of fitness, but finds it hard to get it into the busy schedule with work and family.
X is content with the place in career and has not, as in the youth, the possibilities to work long hours as X wants to be with the family “I want to play with my children every day”. Sometimes X works in the evening, when the kids are in bed.
Education
X has a degree in sales- and marketing from a business school. X studied before there was anything called online marketing, therefore X has the knowledge on online marketing from books and seminars.
The company
X is employed in a large company with a long tradition of offline marketing. X is the manager of the online department in the company and is responsible for the development of the company’s online initiatives.
X is responsible for the company’s online ads. Here X has to make sure that the campaigns support the company’s offline activities. X  is also responsible for getting clients for the department’s new activities. X sees a huge benefit in online marketing, as it is easy to access what you get you for your money.
X makes sure that the company’s website is constantly updated and that new initiatives make it interesting for the customers to visit the website regularly.
X experiences from time to time that the organization is sluggish and that the road from idea to action can be long.
The online department
The online department employs four people. It is primarily X who is responsible for the company’s online marketing. The other employers are mainly engaged in the website and how recently added elements perform. It is important for the department to show a high level of activity on their new initiatives.
Communication
X is in daily contact with the company’s many media- and advertising agencies about campaign activities for the next quarter. X lets the media agencies deliver media plans. “I do not have the time to keep an eye on what sites to post on. They are much better at that.” X has the final say on the media plans.
X reports directly to the board and presents last quarter’s result as well as new initiatives. This is done by collecting numbers from the agency. They are copied into Excel and later into a PPT.
Technology
Apart from X, everybody in the online department is interested in technology. X finds new technologies expensive and difficult to handle, but has a notion that there might be some benefits.

 

Reference

[1] Nielsen, L. 2004. Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios.  Samfundslitteratur. Copenhagen.
[2] Nisbett, R. E. 2000. The Geography of Thought.  Nicholas Brealey Publishing. London.

Lene Nielsen wrote her Ph.D. thesis ‘Engaging Personas and Narrative Scenarios’ in 2004.
She is a usability consultant at Snitker & Co.
Contact information: ln@snitker.com