Resilience in design: The use of user persona to enhance co-working spaces design

Abstract

Persona is a design methodology that exemplifies targets users as fictional, detailed archetypical characters that represent distinct groupings of behaviours, goals and motivations observed and identified by the designer during the research phase of a design project. The persona method has developed from being a user cantered design methodology for IT systems to be applied in many other contexts, including the development of products, marketing, communication strategy, and service design. The method is used to communicate targeted customers' needs, allow the designer to switch between the user's perspective and the designer role and orient design teams to user experience. Despite the importance of understanding users in the interior design field, minimal research about using persona for interior designers has been recorded. This research aims to present the value of using user persona maps in designing resilience interiors, looking at a co-working space as an example. The research methodology developed persona maps as a diagnostic tool for interior designers to help design resilience interiors by understanding space users. The paper goal will be achieved by investigating persona maps as a tool for interior designers to help them understand, analyse and communicate users' needs in designing interior spaces. The customised persona model is modified to include a narrative, picture, and name to provide interior designers with a vivid and detailed representation of the design target. The results of this research are based on three qualitative phases with the participation of 46 designers; through the continuous analysis of persona maps and design implementation, this research documents the benefits of incorporating personas into different design processes. Then elaborates on difficulties experienced within the suggested model and contribute to the body of knowledge by producing a practical model that can be the starting point of a successful project brief, client's ambitions and users' requirements realisation in a project space. The findings of persona usages in the interior design of the suggested co-working space showed how persona enriched various design process phases as interior designers continuously referred to persona analysis during the conceptualisation and schematic design phases. Additionally, persona helped designers design a resilient interior by demonstrating ways of understanding and interpreting user needs and helped filter user information to develop guidelines and design components that responded to users' hidden needs. Moreover, the user's persona helped the Interior Designers bridge the gap between a theoretical understanding of users in space and design for them. The findings revealed that persona could be in the aesthetical form of the resulting space design and the long-term value and functionality of space, making it a more resilient interior aid.