PERSEL, a ready-to-use PERsonality-based user selection tool to maximize user experience redesign effectiveness

Abstract

Some literature has already demonstrated the widespread influence of human personality on product design. Nevertheless, most of the existing user experience (UX) design methods and tools do not fully exploit knowledge about user personality in selecting the best participants to maximize the effectiveness of the design efforts. This research tries to fill the gap by introducing PERSEL, the ready-to-use PERsonality-based SELector. PERSEL is a Microsoft Excel workbook, free to download, which allows expression of the objectives (needs) and assessment of the user personality; in turn, PERSEL suggests the best users to be involved in UX redesign activities and in what way, in order to get solutions answering to the needs in the best possible way. A comparison of the solutions generated by the first adoption of PERSEL in the field with those coming from the involvement of users selected without obeying any specific criterion, begins validating the research results, mainly in terms of PERSEL functioning and effectiveness.