article

Communicating User Experience: "Wicked" Problems, Patchwork Personas, and the ICTD Project Lifecycle

Author:

Hilary A. Sarat St. PeterAuthors Info & Claims

International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, Volume 7, Issue 2

Pages 14 - 26

https://doi.org/10.4018/IJSKD.2015040102

Published: 01 April 2015 Publication History

Abstract

Research in the ICT4D field implicates lack of user-centered design in the high rate of ICTD project failure. The field of user experience UX offers potentially fruitful approaches for user-centered design. In the ICTD context, these principles and methods clash with the triple constraints of project management time, scope and funding. This paper introduces the user persona from UX design as a powerful tool for considering the user's perspective within resource-constrained ICTD projects. Although personas appear simple, they introduce complex communicative affordances, pragmatic benefits, and risks to ICTD projects. A brief conclusion revisits the larger problem of ICTD project failure, and considers the potential role of personas in addressing this problem.

References

[1]

Aguirre Sánchez, L., Vannini, S., Rega, I., & Cantoni, L. 2013, May. Fictional Characters, Real Data: Personas Depicting Staff And Users Of Community Multimedia Centres In Mozambique. IFIP Working Group 9.4. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries, Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

[2]

Census of India. 2001. Report of the technical group on population projections constituted by the national commission on population. New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner.

[3]

Cooper, A. 1999. The inmates are running the asylum. Indianapolis, IN: Sams.

[4]

Dearden, A., & Haider Rizvi, S. M. 2009. A deeply embedded sociotechnical strategy for designing ICT for development. International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 14, 52-70.

[5]

Dearden, A., & Haider Rizvi, S. M. 2015. ICT4D and participatory design. The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society.

[6]

Dodson, L., Sterling, S. R., & Bennett, J. K. 2012. Considering failure: Eight years of ITID research. Information Technologies & International Development, 92, 19-34.

[7]

Dunckley, L., Boundaouda, S. B., Abdelnour-Nocera, J., & Waema, T. M. 2009. Socio-technical issues of participatory design in the developing world. International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development, 13, 1-14.

[8]

Getto, G., & St. Amant, K. 2014. Designing globally, working locally: Using personas to develop online communication products for international users. Communications Design Quarterly, 31, 24-33.

[9]

Harris, R. 2015. How ICT4D research fails the poor. Information Technology for Development. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02681102.2015.1018115

[10]

Hartson, R., & Pyla, P. 2012. The UX book: process and guidelines for ensuring a quality user experience. Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

[11]

Heeks, R. 2009. The ICT4D 2.0 manifesto: "Where next for ICTs and international development? Manchester, UK: Development Informatics Group, University of Manchester Institute for Development Policy and Management.

[12]

ISO 9241-210. 2010. Ergonomics of human system interaction - Part 210: Human-centered design for interactive systems. Retrieved from http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=52075

[13]

Meissner, F., & Blake, E. 2011. Understanding culturally distant end-users through intermediary-derived personas. Proceedings of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference on Knowledge, Innovation and Leadership in a Diverse, Multidisciplinary Environment SAICSIT '11. New York, USA: ACM. 10.1145/2072221.2072266

[14]

Miaskiewicz, T., & Kozar, K. A. 2011. Personas and user-centered design: How can personas benefit product design processes? Design Studies, 325, 417-430.

[15]

Mulder, S., & Yaar, Z. 2007. The user is always right: A practical guide to creating and using personas for the web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

[16]

Nielsen, L., Nielsen, K. S., Stage, J., & Billestrup, J. 2013. Going global with personas. In Human-Computer Interaction-INTERACT 2013. Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[17]

Project Management Institute. 2000. A guide to the project management body of knowledge PMBOK guide.

[18]

PruittJ.GrudinJ. 2003. Personas: Practice and theory. Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Designing for user experiences DUX '03. New York, NY: ACM, 1-15. 10.1145/997078.997089

[19]

Putnam, C., Kolko, B., & Wood, S. 2012. Communicating about users in ICTD: leveraging HCI personas. Proceedings of International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development ICTD '12. Atlanta, Georgia: ACM. 10.1145/2160673.2160714

[20]

Reittel, H., & Webber, M. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 42, 155-169.

[21]

Schwartz, A., Kaplan, E., Weinraub Jajoie, E., Terrell, T., & Ajambo, E. 2015. Using a principal agent model to explain user-centered design challenges for mother tongue reading in Kenya. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development ICTD '15. New York, NY: ACM. 10.1145/2737856.2738021

[22]

Selwyn, N. 2013. Empowering the world's poorest children"? A critical examination of one laptop per child. In Selwyn, N., & Facer, K. Eds., The politics of education and technology: Conflicts, controversies, and connections pp. 100-125. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

[23]

Sen, A. 1999. Development as freedom. New York, NY: Knopf.

[24]

Simon, H. A. 1956. Rational choice and the structure of the environment. Psychological Review, 632, 129-138. 13310708.

[25]

Tongia, R., & Subrahmanian, E. 2006. ICT for development - a design challenge. Proceedings of IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development ICTD '06. Berkeley, CA: ACM.

[26]

United Nations Development Project. 1990. Human development report 1990. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

[27]

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. n.d. Personas. Retrieved from http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

[28]

Walsham, G. 2012. Are we making a better world with ICTs? Reflections on a future agenda for the IS field. Journal of Information Technology, 272, 87-93.

[29]

Walton, R. 2013. Stakeholder flux: Participation in technology-based international development projects. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 274, 409-435.

[30]

Wyche, S. P., Oreglia, E., Ames, M. G., Hoadley, C., Johri, A., Sengers, P., & Steinfield, C. 2012. Learning from marginalized users: Reciprocity in HCI4D. Extended Abstracts, Proceedings of the ACM Conference in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing CSCW '12. ACM.

Cited By

Cabrero DWinschiers-Theophilus HAbdelnour-Nocera J(2016)A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology DesignProceedings of the First African Conference on Human Computer Interaction10.1145/2998581.2998595(149-154)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2998581.2998595
Cabrero DWinschiers-Theophilus HAbdelnour-Nocera JKapuire G(2016)A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian localesProceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Full papers - Volume 110.1145/2940299.2940310(101-110)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2940299.2940310
Cabrero DKapuire GWinschiers-Theophilus HStanley CAbdelnour-Nocera J(2016)A UX and Usability expression of Pastoral OvaHimbaProceedings of the 2nd International Conference in HCI and UX Indonesia 201610.1145/2898459.2898473(89-92)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2898459.2898473

Communicating User Experience: "Wicked" Problems, Patchwork Personas, and the ICTD Project Lifecycle
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods

Recommendations

Using Persona Development to Design a Smartphone Application for Older and Younger Diabetes Patients – A Methodological Approach for Persona Development
Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population
Abstract
Personas are fictional but realistic representations of user groups of a product or service that focus on their goals, needs, behavior, and other characteristics that may impact the design of the product. Using personas in the early phases of the ...
Participatory design of persona artefacts for user eXperience in non-WEIRD cultures
PDC '14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Industry Cases, Workshop Descriptions, Doctoral Consortium papers, and Keynote abstracts - Volume 2

Persona is elicited through qualitative, quantitative or both methods combined. Yet, for it to be validated data must come from research on end-users. Literature reveals projects combining persona and participatory design (PD) tend to be long-lasting, ...
User-centered design in the context of large and distributed projects
CHI EA '06: CHI '06 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

User-centered design (UCD) is a research and product development orientation that utilizes end user or customer information for making better (efficient, usable, enjoyable etc.) and thus commercially successful products. In practice, this is achieved by ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development

International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development Volume 7, Issue 2

April 2015

62 pages

ISSN:1941-6253

EISSN:1941-6261

Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

IGI Global

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 April 2015

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

3
Total Citations
View Citations
0
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 08 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Cabrero DWinschiers-Theophilus HAbdelnour-Nocera J(2016)A Critique of Personas as representations of "the other" in Cross-Cultural Technology DesignProceedings of the First African Conference on Human Computer Interaction10.1145/2998581.2998595(149-154)Online publication date: 21-Nov-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2998581.2998595
Cabrero DWinschiers-Theophilus HAbdelnour-Nocera JKapuire G(2016)A hermeneutic inquiry into user-created personas in different Namibian localesProceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Full papers - Volume 110.1145/2940299.2940310(101-110)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2940299.2940310
Cabrero DKapuire GWinschiers-Theophilus HStanley CAbdelnour-Nocera J(2016)A UX and Usability expression of Pastoral OvaHimbaProceedings of the 2nd International Conference in HCI and UX Indonesia 201610.1145/2898459.2898473(89-92)Online publication date: 13-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2898459.2898473

View Options

View options

Figures

Tables

Media

View Issue’s Table of Contents