A Comprehensive Persona Template to Understand Citizens’ Mobility Needs

Abstract

In the city of Kaiserslautern, an urban district is being built, that aims to be climate-neutral. To achieve this aim, innovative concepts and technologies for energy generation and mobility services are to be applied. For the mobility concept, we needed personas as inhabitants and stakeholders are not living there yet. Since we could not find a persona template for the documentation of travelers’ needs, we designed a persona template that provides a comprehensive picture of travel needs. We took a template based on Alan Cooper’s idea and customized it to fit the topic of mobility, adding personality traits that are the basis of concrete mobility requirements. We also added characteristics of a person according to their stage of life, because personality traits hardly change over a person’s lifetime. In addition, we included attitudes towards sustainability and technology. A description of the life situation together with the usual travel destinations and trip companions is also part of the persona template. The design of our template allows it to be used in other projects as well. We created personas based on our template and used them in two different workshops. The participants were able to use the personas without much explanation. A plan for further evaluation is presented in the discussion.