Creating Personas focused on Representing Potential Requirements to Support the Design of Applications

Abstract

Personas help in understanding the users' needs. However, their descriptions usually contain too many details related to personal characteristics and too little information relevant to the software that will be developed. This may limit their use and acceptance. In this context, the PATHY technique was proposed. It uses guiding questions to create personas more focused on the design of applications. In this paper, we present an experimental study where the technique was integrated with user stories. The study aims at evaluating the participants' perception regarding the structure of the technique and analyzing the requirements generated when using PATHY in a software development process. The results showed that, although the participants found some difficulties, they considered the technique useful for creating personas. Furthermore, it helped in the identification of requirements used as basis for the elaboration of user stories.