Personas are fictional characters created to represent different user types of a product or service. They are used to shape the design focus and to identify opportunities and challenges in designing for different user groups. They are usually devised and refined from information collected from real users.
We used personas to identify what experiences particular visitor groups would like to have in a museum. As part of our co-design workshop during the first meSch consortium meeting, we wanted to initiate discussions surrounding the potential visitor groups interacting with meSch technologies and their motivations for visiting museums.
Our group was subdivided into smaller groups of 4 – 5 people. Each group was given a brief on a visitor persona to work with; examples included a grandmother, a grandfather, a father and a child. Each group formed a story relating to what may motivate their persona to visit a museum and what they would like to experience as part of a museum visit. Each group was given materials (paper, old magazines for cut-outs, markers, etc.) for the purpose of visualising their given persona. Each group had to create a story or scenario of what kind of experience they would like in a particular kind of museum.
At the end of the session, each group presented their given persona in poster format. Developing the personas motivated the entire group to build understandings of the potential visitor groups and how they would potentially interact with meSch technologies. However, it was also noted that not all visitor groups would fit into these personas and the facilitators acknowledged that it would be important to ask the cultural heritage professionals in the project about their typical visitor groups.
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