Comparing Persona Analytics and Social Media Analytics for a User-Centric Task Using Eye-Tracking and Think-Aloud

We compare a data-driven persona system and an analytics system for efficiency and effectiveness for a user identification task. Findings from the 34-participant experiment show that the data-driven persona system affords faster task completion, is easier for users to engage with, and provides better user identification accuracy. Eye-tracking data indicates that the participants focus most of their attention on the persona content while focusing more on navigation features when using the analytics system. The combined results provide empirical support for the use of data-driven personas for a user identification task, which we surmise to be a result of the persona system following a user-centered design paradigm instead of an information-centered paradigm. That analytics system afforded capabilities and insights that the persona system did not suggest that the triangulation of features may lead to a better overall user understanding.