DESIGN PERSONAS – NEW WAYS, NEW CONTEXTS

Design personas have, since their origins in the late 1990s, been recognised as a design tool to foster ideation and empathy with different user groups. The method originates from software development and has since its instigation become a widespread method adopted in many design disciplines and processes, such as innovation and ideation of IT products, User Experience design, agile systems developing, communication, and marketing (Nielsen 2012; Pruitt & Grudin 2003). To get product design closer to the everyday lives of the users, design personas are a means to capture the everyday experiences and needs of users and customers. Focusing on the user or customer in the design process is in opposition to an artistic understanding of the designer as someone who, by experimentation with materials and form, gets inspiration to create unique products.