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Table 2: Overview of text-based personas in Persona Corpus.
Persona narration
Narrative approach
Per01, Per02, Per03, Per04, Per05, Per06, Per07, Per08, Per09, Per12, Per13, Per14, Per15, Per16, Per17
Per18, Per19, Per25, Per26, Per27, Per28, Per29, Per30, Per31, Per32, Per33, Per34, Per35, Per36, Per37,
Per38, Per39, Per40, Per41, Per42, Per43, Per44, Per47, Per48, Per49, Per50, Per51, Per52, Per55, Per56
Per57, Per58, Per59, Per60, Per61, Per62, Per63, Per64, Per65, Per66, Per67, Per68, Per69, Per70, Per71,
Per72, Per73, Per74, Per75, Per76, Per77, Per78, Per79, Per80, Per81, Per82, Per83, Per84, Per85, Per86,
Per87, Per88, Per89, Per90, Per91, Per92, Per93, Per94, Per95, Per96, Per97, Per98
87
Bullet points Per10, Per11, Per20, Per21, Per22, Per23, Per24, Per45, Per46, Per53, Per54
11
Persona format
Unstructured
Per01, Per02, Per15, Per16, Per17, Per18, Per19, Per20, Per21, Per22, Per23, Per25, Per26, Per27, Per28,
Per29, Per30, Per31, Per32, Per36, Per37, Per38, Per49, Per50, Per51, Per52, Per53, Per54, Per70, Per75,
Per76, Per77, Per78, Per79, Per80, Per81, Per82, Per83, Per84, Per85, Per86, Per87, Per88, Per89, Per90,
Per92, Per93
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Semi-structured
Per03, Per04, Per05, Per06, Per07, Per08, Per09, Per10, Per11, Per12, Per13, Per14, Per33, Per34, Per35,
Per39, Per40, Per41, Per42, Per43, Per44, Per47, Per48, Per55, Per56, Per63, Per64, Per71, Per72, Per73,
Per74, Per91, Per94, Per95, Per96, Per97, Per98
37
Structured
Per24, Per45, Per46, Per57, Per58, Per59, Per60, Per61, Per62, Per65, Per66, Per67, Per68, Per69 14
Persona length
Normal
Per01, Per02, Per03, Per04, Per05, Per06, Per07, Per08, Per09, Per10, Per11, Per12, Per13, Per14, Per15,
Per16, Per17, Per18, Per19, Per21, Per24, Per25, Per26, Per28, Per29, Per33, Per34, Per35, Per39, Per40,
Per41, Per42, Per43, Per45, Per46, Per52, Per55, Per56, Per57, Per58, Per59, Per60, Per61, Per62, Per63,
Per64, Per65, Per66, Per67, Per71, Per72, Per91, Per97, Per98
54
Brief
Per20, Per22, Per23, Per27, Per30, Per31, Per32, Per36, Per37, Per38, Per44, Per47, Per48, Per49, Per50,
Per51, Per53, Per54, Per68, Per69, Per70, Per73, Per74, Per75, Per76, Per77, Per78, Per79, Per80, Per81,
Per82, Per83, Per84, Per85, Per86, Per87, Per88, Per89, Per90, Per92, Per93, Per94, Per95, Per96
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Figure 5: Unstructured persona (left) (Lachner et al., 2015)
((c) Springer, reused with permission), and Structured per-
sona (right) (Aguirre et al., 2021) ((c) Springer, reused with
permission).
(i.e., demographic information, general background,
context-specific information). Good examples are
presented in [Per10], [Per11], and [Per45]. Interest-
ingly, we found one persona ([Per52]) presented us-
ing both approaches. Demographic information and
general personal stories of the persona were presented
in a narrative manner, while context-specific persona
stories was presented using bullet points.
Another dimension we identified is persona de-
scription format. We found that there are three
main ways used to format text-based persona descrip-
tions: unstructured, semi-structured, and struc-
tured. Narrating a persona in an unstructured man-
ner means that the persona is described without any
binding structure (and/or order) to present the persona
attributes. Some good examples of this type of per-
sona are [Per26], [Per30], [Per89]. Two examples are
shown in Figure 5.
Text-based personas can be narrated in a semi-
structured fashion. The persona attributes are grouped
based on their similarities; such as demographic-
Figure 6: Semi-structured persona examples.
related attributes (e.g., name, age, gender, marital sta-
tus), skills, social interaction, and computer experi-
ence. There is no binding rule in grouping the persona
attributes, as we observed that even personas used in
the same project can have different groupings (see
Figure 6). As examples, [Per39] and [Per40] were
used in the same case study and had different sections
in their persona descriptions. [Per39] had ICT us-
age, Relation to grandchild(ren), Goals, Frustration
and pain point, and Primary usage reasons. Whereas,
[Per40] had sections for Social contacts, Interest and
experience in new communication technologies, and
Requirements.
For structured personas, the descriptions are nar-
rated by following a particular format defined by
the persona creators (see Figure 5). In [Per65] and
[Per66], the personas had sections presenting de-
mographics, defining traits, professional background,
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