Personas and Analytics: A Comparative User Study of Efficiency and Effectiveness for a User Identification Task

Joni Salminen, Soon Gyo Jung, Shammur Chowdhury, Sercan Sengün, Bernard J. Jansen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

Personas are a well-known technique in human computer interaction. However, there is a lack of rigorous empirical research evaluating personas relative to other methods. In this 34-participant experiment, we compare a persona system and an analytics system, both using identical user data, for efficiency and effectiveness for a user identification task. Results show that personas afford faster task completion than the analytics system, as well as outperforming analytics with significantly higher user identification accuracy. Qualitative analysis of think-aloud transcripts shows that personas have other benefits regarding learnability and consistency. However, the analytics system affords insights and capabilities that personas cannot due to inherent design differences. Findings support the use of personas to learn about users, empirically confirming some of the stated benefits in the literature, while also highlighting the limitations of personas that may necessitate the use of accompanying methods.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450367080
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 21 2020
Event2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020 - Honolulu, United States
Duration: Apr 25 2020Apr 30 2020

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHonolulu
Period4/25/204/30/20

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Software

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