Application of Personas in User-Centered Design of Medical ...

Application of Personas in User-Centered
Design of Medical Informatics Systems
and Services
Trine KROGSTAD a,1 , Tatjana M. BURKOW a , Luis FERNANDEZ-LUQUE b
a Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine, UNN, Tromsø, Norway
b Northern Research Institute – Norut, Tromsø, Norway
1. Introduction
Abstract. The Persona technique is widely used and adapted within software
product development and consulting as a supplement to other qualitative and
quantitative User-Centered Design techniques. However, there has not been
published as many examples of its use within the domain of Medical Informatics.
Our poster will provide a short introduction to the Persona technique based on
literature findings and our own initial experiences and assessments.
Keywords. Human-Computer Interaction, User-Centered Design, Personas
Personas are used as a supportive tool for deciding who is being designed for and to
make the design support particular types of users achieve their goals. It was Cooper
that introduced Personas for the software industry as a design and communication tool
[1]. The Persona technique has since been widely adopted, extended and described [2].
Quantitative and qualitative data are used to describe fictitious persons, called
Personas, each representing different user categories with shared characteristics. These
user representations are based on information like demographics, roles, activities,
behavior patterns, motivations, goals, attitudes, frustrations, environment, skills,
limitations and experience levels. Each Persona do typically have one or more photos
or illustrations to bring the Persona to life, and a Persona description including a name
and some essential characteristics extracted from the collected data.
2. Preliminary findings
23 rd International Conference of the European Federation for Medical Informatics
User Centred Networked Health Care - A. Moen et al. (Eds.)
MIE 2011 / CD / Posters
The Persona technique is a useful tool in many settings. Even if there are certain
fundamentals and many usage recommendations, there is no single “correct”
application of it. In practice there are several different uses of the technique [3]. It is to
a great extent a matter of adaption to the specific context and use, to find a balance
between putting adequate versus too much effort into the Persona process, be aware of
1 Corresponding Author: Trine Krogstad, Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine,
University Hospital of North-Norway, P.O. Box 6060, NO-9038 Tromsø, Norway; Email:
trine.krogstad@telemed.no.

the strengths and weaknesses of this technique, and to use it in combination with other
tools. Also, it should be noted, that assessments of the technique are often experience
and theoretically funded, and not extensively tested in comparison studies. Overall, the
Persona technique can be a supplemental aid in the process of defining what a system
should do, and in the design, evaluation and marketing of it. A central part is its means
for visualization of, agreement on and communication of target user groups (actors in
scenarios and use cases). This user concretizing may complement other more abstract
or functional focused approaches. We believe it is a technique that more Medical
Informatics project could benefit from exploring. As in other contexts, the Personas
then details more on the specific health and care related characteristics of interest [4-7].
For our own part, the making of Personas may be used partly for visualizing the
chronically ill and their needs - utilizing this as a basis for finding relevant new homebased
eHealth services to develop, and to prioritize and choose between these.
Similarly, when we have an initial idea of a technology or service that might be useful,
the Persona technique can be used as an aid in exploring and deciding which user
groups within the particular patient group to target, and designing to meet the needs of
these. The latter variant is how we have used the technique so far. Further, when
different project participants (competences and roles) are involved, there is a need for
communicating knowledge about and specifications of target user groups. Within our
small applied research group there are already a high degree of both individual and
shared knowledge about, and attention, to users. But we do still consider Personas
useful to make the knowledge about our users explicit and commonly agreed on. They
assist in making the user groups visible and live in discussions amongst the project
team members. The researchers can point to something from the literature or a field
observation that is relevant for one Persona, whilst the health care personnel may make
another point based on their daily experience with this subset of users. Further, since
we have a long-term research and development activity, the use of Personas provides
us with an opportunity for knowledge transfer as the team changes over time. With
gradual expansion of our portfolio of Personal eHealth systems, services and research
topics [8], our Personas may also develop and increase in accordance with this.
References
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