Designing for STEM faculty: The use of personas for evaluating and improving design

Abstract

We demonstrate in a case study how we used a qualitative method for user modeling, persona, to evaluate and refine the design of an interactive visual analytics tool. We explain the literature and our methods for building the persona, and its used to (a) evaluate existing design decisions; (b) make new design decisions in order to serve a specific user group, faculty in STEM. We present the results of 24 in-depth, qualitative interviews with STEM faculty. The interviews addressed topics such as daily work, sources of work satisfaction and success, work goals, activities, needs, and difficulties. The results provide an insight into the busy lives of STEM academics and can be useful to other efforts that aim to design for this user group. We discuss how we used these results, presented in the form of a persona, to evaluate existing design decisions and to create new features that would serve this audience.