Persona Design in Participatory Agile Software Development

Abstract

Personas are a popular method of user centered design (UCD) in technical product development and have become indispensable in software development. In agile software development, which is nowadays predominantly used in modern projects, personas do not have a role of their own. User needs are usually introduced into development via the Product Owner role by means of user stories. Especially when software is developed for user groups with special needs, it is often difficult for developers to understand the needs of the users based on common user stories. The study presented in this paper was conducted as part of the EU-funded research and development project Easy Reading. It demonstrates how personas for users with learning difficulties can be designed in inclusive research teams and how they can be successfully embedded into the agile development process.