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Can Unhappy Pictures Enhance the Eect of Personas? A User Experiment
ere has been lile research into whether a persona’s picture should portray a happy or unhappy individual. We report a user
experiment with 235 participants, testing the eects of happy and unhappy image styles on user perceptions, engagement, and
personality traits aributed to personas using a mixed-methods analysis. Results indicate that the participant’s perceptions of the
persona’s realism and pain point severity increase with the use of unhappy pictures. In contrast, personas with happy pictures are
perceived as more extroverted, agreeable, open, conscientious, and emotionally stable. e participants’ proposed design ideas for the
personas scored more lexical empathy scores for happy personas. ere were also signicant perception changes along with the
gender and ethnic lines regarding both empathy and perceptions of pain points. Implications are the facial expression in the persona
prole can aect the perceptions of those employing the personas. erefore, persona designers should align facial expressions with
the task for which the personas will be employed. Generally, unhappy images emphasize realism and pain point severity, and happy
images invoke positive perceptions.
Keywords: Personas, Design, Pictures, Sentiment, User Experiment
1 INTRODUCTION
A persona is a ctitious person representing a real user group of particular interest [15]. Personas are a well-
established, user-centered design technique [50] for (soware) supporting developers, designers, and other
stakeholders engaged in product development, requirements engineering, UX/UI design, marketing, user support, and
other tasks requiring an understanding of users or customers [6,13,47,56]. Personas are presented in proles that
display information, such as the goals, needs, and wants of the user segment, and, thus, help designers contextualize
users [88]. An essential part of the design of these user proles is the persona picture [48,60]. Persona pictures
constitute a non-verbal form of communicating details of the persona to the users [26]. e picture inuences how the
persona is perceived and what connotations and stereotypes are associated with the persona by the stakeholders
[27,67]. As such, choosing the persona picture is a crucial step in the design of a persona.
e current study investigates the eect of happy versus unhappy pictures on the perceptions of those using the
persona. Research on person perception in psychology lends support to the general idea that people perceive others
dierently based on their observed mood [41,45]. Specically, “happy people” may be perceived dierently than
“unhappy people” [8]. However, there is no evidence whether using happy pictures is beer than unhappy pictures for
personas. In this study, we specically test whether using “unhappy” pictures enhances central persona perceptions
[78], such as empathy, pain point, usefulness, realism, and completeness. ese persona perceptions are key to the
eective employment of personas by end-users. We also perform quantitative and qualitative analyses on the wrien
outputs of the users’ design task to investigate if the design ideas generated using happy versus unhappy personas are
qualitatively dierent. This analysis is based on the participants’ proposed product ideas that address the remote-work
needs of a persona. Given that examples can be found of design personas of both types (see ), it can be stated that both
approaches (happy/unhappy pictures) are used by persona creators. However, the fact there is no study on the pros
and cons of each approach implies a research gap, which our study addresses. Given that personas in use contain both
happy/unhappy facial expressions, addressing this gap can positively aect the design of future personas.
e design scenario we use concerns developing a product that addresses the remote-work needs of a given user
segment that the persona represents. We create the persona proles that represent people with remote-work needs
[20] and vary the personas’ gender, ethnicity, and picture happiness to address our research questions (introduced in
Section 2). User needs (and personas) for remote work are extremely topical, not only because of issues such as the
COVID-19 pandemic but also because of the long-term trend of work moving toward remote (nomadic) work and
distributed teams [14,43,73], especially in knowledge-intensive industries and professions dealing with digital inputs
and outputs. erefore, the design issue itself is of importance and is of practical relevance.
(a) (b)
Figure 1: (a) Unhappy persona (picture credit: hps://dribbble.com/shots/3338369-Universe-User-Personas/aachments/723326). (b)
Happy persona (picture credit: hps://evolt.io/platform-tour/user-persona/). Whether persona creators should use pictures of happy
or unhappy individuals is unclear. Both practices are used.
2 RELATED LITERATURE
2.1 Persona Pictures as Critical Design Cues
Researchers have found persona pictures inuential for persona users’ perceptions of the persona [27,34,51,64,65,67].
Pictures aract the user’s focus of aention to personas, guide the processing of persona information, and convey
emotional signals about the persona. Perception of the personas, in turn, aects the aitudes and deployment of
personas in design tasks [38,39,57,58]. erefore, the choice of a persona picture maers for the outcome of persona
adoption and use in organizations engaged in user-centered design activities.
Despite the broadly acknowledged importance of pictures for the design of personas, it is unclear what kind of
pictures persona developers should choose when creating persona proles. e typical choice, thus far, has been to use
online photobank pictures with smiling, good-looking people [63,64] who appear happy and content in their lives.
However, there is an issue with this: Is this optimal for persona design, or are there beer alternatives for persona
imagery?
is issue is exacerbated by the fact that there is scarce research on persona pictures in the literature. Also, design
studies employing personas do not typically explain the rationale behind choosing particular photos [32], which is
interesting given the amount of eort taken to generate the other persona information.
Out of the few studies focusing on persona pictures, Long [37] analyzed the use of illustration-style pictures versus
photographs and found that photographs were more optimal for user recall, with the participants recalling more
details of the persona when using real photographs. Long also found that illustrations resulted in more vague answers
about the persona in post-session interviews and risked the participants superimposing self-referential information
about themselves onto the personas (a general challenge of the persona technique [84]).
Nieters et al. [59], in turn, found that using the pictorial style of action gures enhanced the memorability of the
personas. e downside was that these personas were taken less seriously by corporate stakeholders, who found the
action personas amusing and joked about them. Nevertheless, the ndings of Nieters and colleagues raise the
important question of whether “seriousness” is an essential quality for the persona to be remembered by the
stakeholders.
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Oen, design studies employing personas do not explain the rationale behind choosing particular pictures [32].
From our review of persona proles in the literature, most appear to be stock photos (i.e., photos from commercial or
open-source photo archives). ere is some evidence that using stock photos of professional models is not always
optimal for persona design. Salminen et al. [72] conducted a large-scale survey study with 2,400 participants where
they compared the eect of photographs taken of “real people” against those taken of professional models on various
user perceptions of personas, as well as investigating the eect of a smiling picture on the perceptions. eir ndings
indicated that a smile increased the perceived similarity with the persona, similar personas had a higher likability, and
likability increased the willingness to use a persona [72]. Furthermore, the use of stock photos decreased the perceived
similarity with the persona and their credibility, both of which were signicant predictors of one’s willingness to use a
persona.
e collective evidence from these prior studies suggests that there is room to investigate the optimal pictures for
persona design. In particular, this research focuses on the question of “picture happiness” (i.e., the person in the image
is feeling or showing pleasure or contentment). We pose the following research questions (RQs):
RQ1: Does the use of happy/unhappy pictures alter the persona users’ perceptions of personas?
RQ2: Does (a) gender and/or (b) ethnicity inuence the persona users’ perceptions of personas when using
happy/unhappy pictures?
RQ3: Does the use of happy/unhappy pictures alter the users’ engagement (time participants spend viewing) with the
persona?
RQ4: How does the use of happy/unhappy persona pictures aect initial solutions designed for personas’ pain points?
For the rst and third RQs, we formulate specic hypotheses in the following subsection. For the second RQ, we
conduct a statistical analysis investigating these variables. For the fourth RQ, we conduct a qualitative analysis on the
initial task outputs obtained from persona users, reported in Section 5, with suggestions of future research pursuing
the eect of these personas further in the design process.
2.2 Hypotheses
For our hypothesis formulation, we draw from previous persona research investigating persona perception [42,74],
referring to persona users perceiving the personas as any other human being. is notion is consistent with Cooper’s
initial idea of personas being ctitious but realistic in their portrayal of user groups [15], but the concept of persona
perception specically makes the connection between persona research and social psychology studies, in which person
perception (i.e., the views and aitudes held by a person about others [34]) is a well-studied eld of inquiry. rough
this conceptual linkage, persona studies in HCI can borrow terms, concepts, and theories from social psychology to
beer understand how persona users perceive personas in various design tasks [42]. Particularly, our hypotheses deal
with the dualism of perceiving others as happy (or not) and how this dualism aects the perception of personas for a
design task.
To this end, we formulate the following hypotheses:
H1: Picture happiness increases users’ empathy toward the persona. [RQ1]
H2: Picture happiness decreases users’ perceptions of the persona’s pain points. [RQ1]
H3: Picture happiness increases users’ perceptions that the persona is useful for a design task. [RQ1]
H4: Picture happiness decreases users’ perceptions of the persona as being realistic. [RQ1]
H5: Picture happiness increases users’ perceptions of the persona having complete information. [RQ1]
H6: Picture happiness increases users’ perceptions of the persona’s personality. [RQ1]
H7: Picture happiness increases users’ engagement with the persona. [RQ3]
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ese are predominant traits of persona perceptions by end-users. On the one hand, previous research suggests
that “persona creators should use smiling pictures of real people to evoke positive perceptions toward the personas”
[72] (p. 1). On the other hand, stock photos (of mostly happy people) were interpreted, in the same study, to diminish
the users’ sense of identication with the persona [72]. e “real” pictures deployed in this previous study did not
portray professional models but “everyday people.” However, acquiring such photographs, even if they would be
optimal, is dicult due to constraints of time, cost, and usage rights (privacy). erefore, persona creators typically
resort to photobank pictures largely containing professional models. Given this bounded realism of persona design, the
interesting question is whether “unhappiness” in the picture can curb some of the previously observed challenges of
stock photos by making the persona appear more “real” [H1].
Research in social psychology suggests that negative people may be taken more seriously than happy people,
especially when negative messages are communicated with unhappy facial expressions, as these expressions enhance
the eect of the message [22]. In turn, happy people may, in some circumstances, be perceived as “fake” or non-serious
[24] [H4], especially when dealing with understanding a person’s needs [28] [H2].
Based on Gestalt theory, which suggests that the whole of a design is more than the sum of its parts [46], we
hypothesize that personas with unhappy pictures are perceived as more useful [H3] as they emphasize and support
the pain-point information (i.e., relevant information for the task), whereas happy pictures could be seen as redundant
information. Similar to the holistic processing of faces [30], the information in persona proles is processed in a
holistic manner [6]. is same eect may lead to personas with unhappy pictures being perceived as more complete
than those with happy pictures [H5], as the laer may conict with the other information the users are focused on
(i.e., the pain points themselves).
Furthermore, users can make inferences about the persona’s personality based on the persona picture [75]. ese
personality ratings can then aect what kind of solutions are developed for the persona [3,4]. For example, extroverted
personas may be considered to require dierent kinds of products than introverts. e underlying notion here is that
people tend to extrapolate someone’s personality from a single picture (the rst impression eect [40]): Hence, the
momentary “mood” of the persona aects how its personality is judged [H6].
Finally, happy people may be perceived as more pleasant, which may aect how receptive users are toward them
[35]. e underlying notion here is positivity bias [87]—people are more drawn toward happy people and therefore
spend more time geing to know such individuals. erefore, we expect that users would be more interested in
personas with happy pictures and would consequently spend more time reviewing their information [H7]. Overall,
these reasons suggest that the choice of picture based on happiness can have an impact on persona design, especially
when considering personas as individual human beings. e impacts are far-reaching, as the ndings can be leveraged
for a range of systems that employ pictures of people and as the facial expressions for happy and unhappy tend to be
universal [16,17].
2.3 Measurement Items
Table 1 reports the constructs and measurement items (indicators). e indicators for empathy, usefulness, realism,
completeness, and likability were adopted from the Persona Perception Scale (PPS) [78], an instrument specically
developed for measuring user perceptions of personas and applied in several previous persona user studies
[61,62,64,69]. e indicator for physical aractiveness was adopted from Berscheid and Walster [10]. e pain point
intensity indicator was specically developed for this study—for this, we used Chaopadhyay et al. [14] as inspiration,
as the researchers in that study operationalized user needs statements in a contextual manner.
Personality rating items were obtained from the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) scale by Gosling [23], which
measures the Big Five personality traits: Extroversion (EX), Agreeableness (AG), Conscientiousness (CN),
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Emotional Stability (ES), and Openness (OP). e constructs were measured with Likert scale (7-point) response
options, ranging from “Strongly agree” to “Strongly disagree.” For Picture happiness, the options ranged from
“Extremely happy” to “Extremely unhappy.” Finally, the indicator for Engagement was obtained from altrics by
recording the duration (in seconds) the participants spent perusing the persona they were presented.
Table 1: Constructs and measurement items used in the study. The last column shows their connection to the hypotheses.
ID Construct Measurement item Hypothesis
EM Empathy I felt I could understand the persona as a human being. H1
PP Pain point intensity e persona struggles with remote work. H2
US Usefulness e persona contained useful information for my task of creating
a remote work product.
H3
RE Realism e persona seemed realistic. H4
CO Completeness e persona prole was complete, so that it contained all the
necessary information to understand the users it represents.
H5
PE Personality (Big Five) I see the persona as:
Extraverted, enthusiastic.
Critical, quarrelsome.
Dependable, self-disciplined.
Anxious, easily upset.
Open to new experiences, complex.
Reserved, quiet.
Sympathetic, warm.
Disorganized, careless.
Calm, emotionally stable.
Conventional, uncreative.
H6
EN Engagement Dwell time (duration) H7
PH Picture happiness1How (un)happy did the persona look like? Independent variable
for H1-06
We used the Big Five for two reasons: (1) its commonness in psychological studies and in HCI [12,31] and (2) the
fact that it has been deployed in previous persona studies, with ndings indicating that the persona’s perceived
personality traits can aect design outcomes [4,5,76]. We chose the TIPI scale for the operationalization of the Big Five
traits because this scale aords ease of completion by non-psychology experts while simultaneously providing valid
personality assessment [23]. e denitions of the Big Five traits are as follows [1]:
Extrovert (EX): Active, amicable, assertive, energetic, enthusiastic, outgoing, talkative. ese individuals are
friendly and draw inspiration from social situations.
Agreeable (AG): Compassionate, cooperative, generous, helpful, kind, nurturing, sympathetic. ese
individuals are generally optimistic and trusting of others.
Conscientious (CN): Ecient, hardworking, organized, persevering, responsible, self-disciplined. ese
individuals tend to be reliable and focused on achieving and planning for the future.
Emotionally stable (ES): Calm, relaxed, self-condent. Emotionally stable individuals are not moody or
tense, and they are not easily tipped into experiencing negative emotions.
Open (OP): Artistic, creative, curious, deep, intelligent, imaginative, open-minded, reective. Open
individuals tend to appreciate diverse views, ideas, and experiences.
ese denitions were not shown to the participants, as they are not required for assessing the personality traits,
which is done by calculating the score of each trait from the statements posed to the participants. TIPI is usually
administered as a form of self-evaluation of personality [23]. However, as we wanted the participants to evaluate the
1 Picture happiness is inversely correlated to the “Picture unhappiness” in the hypotheses. In other words, a high
Picture happiness is low Picture unhappiness.
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personality of the personas, we transformed the original statement of “I see myself as …” into “e persona seemed
like …” e scores were processed using the instructions given by Gosling [23] to obtain the nal personality ratings.
3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Overview
ree separate within-subject experiments were conducted, each with a dierent set of personas (see Appendix A for
the full persona proles). Given that our primary focus of the study was the eect of happy and unhappy pictures on
perceptions of the personas, an experimental seing is an appropriate methodological approach as it maximizes
control and precision [47], albeit at the cost of realism. e unhappy/happy conditions and the order were mixed
within each 2 × 2 sequence by randomized assignment and counterbalancing. In other words, each participant sees two
dierent personas, one with a “happy” picture and another one with an “unhappy” picture. We used the conguration
options in the survey soware (altrics) to group the dierent persona pairs, and we then applied randomization and
counterbalancing to the groups. is removes the possibility of a participant seeing the same persona or the same pain
point prole twice.
3.2 Persona Creation
Various methods can be applied to create personas with varying degrees of manual work and automation [33,51]. In
this work, we opted for manual persona creation, as this enables a greater degree of control in the output personas
than using automatic methods. To address our hypotheses and to analyze the consistency of results by demographic
groups, we created personas from multiple genders (male/female) and ethnic backgrounds (see Appendix A for the full
persona proles), leaving the study of other genders and other ethnicities for future research. We selected three ethnic
backgrounds from the listing of the American Psychological Association [2]: persons of African origin, persons of
European origin, and persons of Middle Eastern origin. As far as we know, this is the rst study to investigate persona
perceptions of persons of Middle Eastern origin (African and European origins have been investigated previously,
along with Asian origins [72]). e inclusion of personas with dierent ethnic backgrounds enables us to investigate
possible stereotyping [84].
Male-AO-happy Male-AO-unhappy Female-AO-happy Female-AO-unhappy
Male-EO-happy Male-EO-unhappy Female-EO-happy Female-EO-unhappy
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Male-MO-happy Male-MO-unhappy Female-MO-happy Female-MO-unhappy
Figure 2: Final persona picture pairs (happy/unhappy versions). The pictures were manually curated from an online photobank
service (hps://www.123rf.com), with a license for research use purchased. AO = African origin; EO = European origin; MO = Middle
Eastern origin. The source for ethnical terms in the study is American Psychological Association [2].
e persona pictures (see Figure 2) were selected by browsing online photo banks and identifying suitable picture
pairs of happy/unhappy individuals. We dened the following selection criteria for the pictures:
(1) the pictures are taken by the same photographer (to ensure a consistent technical quality),
(2) the environment (“scene”) of the picture is at home (consistent with the remote-work scenario),
(3) the human model is the same in each picture pair (to avoid possible inconsistencies from the use of dierent
people for the same persona demographics),
(4) each picture has a laptop that the person is using (to signify remote work scenario), and
(5) in all pictures, the gaze is indirect (i.e., not looking at the camera) to mitigate the possibility that the persona-
user rapport is aected by the persona’s pose in the picture.
In other words, we kept as many aspects in the pictures as constant as possible, only varying the sentiment of
happiness. We focused on the broad categories of happy or unhappy facial expressions, keeping the general facial
expression in each category for each treatment approximately the same. Multiple iterations of identifying candidate
pictures were conducted, with one of the authors identifying the pictures and the others commenting on observed
inconsistencies. Once an internal agreement on the pictures was reached, the treatments incorporating these pictures
were created, with examples provided in Figure 3. e process for this image selection was quite lengthy,
demonstrating the issues of using photo banks for persona proles. All treatments are available in Appendix A.
e above choices resulted in the creation of 12 baseline persona treatments (two happiness levels × two genders ×
three ethnic backgrounds). Because each participant would see two personas, it was required to vary the personas’ text
content as well. For this purpose, we created two dierent “pain point proles” that reected dierent user needs for
remote working. We chose the research context of remote work, because of the topicality of remote work, especially
with the global COVID-19 pandemic that is strongly aecting the design profession (and other professions) at the time
of study. As the research context was remote work, the personas were created to contain pain points and other
information related to remote work user types. We created two “pain point proles” (see Figure 3) to avoid showing
one participant two identical persona descriptions; the personas need to dier in their content. e pain point proles
are based on a previous study on challenges observed by remote workers [20].
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Pain point prole 1 Pain point prole 2
Figure 3: Two persona profile treatments. The le picture shows Pain Point Profile 1 (lack of computer skills + slow Internet) with a
happy persona picture. The right picture shows Pain Point Profile 2 (inability to separate work from leisure + lack of focus and
productivity) with an unhappy persona picture. Pain point profiles and happy/unhappy pictures were combined for each persona,
resulting in four treatments per persona and 24 treatments overall.
The treatments were extensively pilot tested. One member of the research team developed the personas. The set of
personas was then critically reviewed by other research team members. Changes centered on the wording of the text and
ensured minimal differences between images as possible. One member of the research team alternated the personas, and
the personas were again pilot tested by members of the research team. This process was repeated until there were no
suggested changes to the persona sets.
is [20] study was based on two surveys with a total of 3,634 responses addressing challenges remote workers
faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. e study found several challenges, of which we chose the following: problems
with connectivity (slow/shared Internet connections, unstable home Internet; captured in pain point 2: “My Internet is
frustratingly slow.”), managing work-life balance (pain point 3: “Sometimes I end up working the whole day.”),
interruptions and distractions (leading to a loss of focus and productivity; pain point 4: “Lately, I’ve been struggling to
keep up with my work.”). We also included one other aspect from the research on the digital divide [86], namely, the
fact that not all remote workers feel comfortable with or are procient at using remote work hardware/soware (Pain
point 1: “I wish I was beer with computers”). Overall, with these personas, we wanted to represent “regular people”
with these pain points – not only those that nd remote work “easy” and “natural.”
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3.3 Data Collection
For data collection, we used Prolic2, an online survey platform. is platform has been deployed in several previous
persona user studies [63–65,69,70] and survey-based research in other domains [52,76], with evaluation studies
showing high data integrity relative to other platforms [53,54]. e survey was pilot tested with three participants, two
from the research team and one external reviewer. Based on the comments by the test participants, several changes
were made to the study introduction. Some minor wording changes were also made to the statements.
To reach adult professionals working in industries relevant to personas, we applied the following sampling criteria
in Prolic: student status (“no”), highest education (“at least undergraduate”), age (“25–60 (inclusive)”), industry
(“art/design; product development; college, university, and adult education; information services and data processing;
other education industry; soware; and scientic or technical services”).
e survey platform had 5,079 matching participants who had been active in the past 90 days. For each 2 × 2
persona pair, we recruited 80 participants (240 in total). ree studies were administered sequentially, and participants
were prevented from participating in more than one study by using the blacklist option on the Prolic platform. e
estimated survey completion time was 21 minutes according to altrics’ estimation tool, which our pilot testing
conrmed to be close to accurate. us, we oered the participants an hourly rate of 8.94, which exceeds the UK
minimum wage (8.72 for workers above 25 years of age as of April 20203). Based on these parameters, the total data
collection cost was 340.55 x 3 = 1,021.65, which included the VAT and the platform’s commission (30%).
3.4 Survey Protocol
Here, we explain how the survey was administered to the participants. Each step is explained in the following.
A. Survey introduction (1/2): “Welcome to this online survey on using personas for the development of remote-
work products. Your responses will be used for an academic study. Participation is voluntary, and you can stop at any
time. For any questions about the study, you can reach out to Dr. [name and email of the principal investigator].”
B. Survey introduction (2/2): “You will be shown a persona (a ctional character) that contains key information
about the remote working needs of a given user segment. Your task is to develop a product that addresses the remote
working needs of this user segment.” In this survey, you will be shown two dierent personas.” e introduction was
split into two pages to facilitate the participants’ absorption of information.
C. Persona denition: “A persona is dened as a ctitious user type and is not a real person. It is a character that
portrays many users.” Acknowledgment of understanding this denition was required (see Figure 4a).
2 hps://www.prolic.co/
3 hps://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates, accessed December 2020.
9
(a) (b)
Figure 4: (a) Persona definition in mobile view of survey. (b) Persona profile example in mobile view (James, male of European
origin, unhappy version).
D. Persona experience: “Your experience with personas” was asked, with the following options:
oUnfamiliar – no experience of personas whatsoever
oNovice – have used personas before but not much
oProcient – have used personas several times before
E. Task introduction: “Review the information shown about the persona. Aerward, you will be asked some
questions about this persona. en you will be asked to describe the product that you want to develop for the persona.
e product can be any oering—digital or physical—that helps the persona cope with remote work.”
F. Persona prole: One of the tested persona proles was randomly loaded; see an example in Figure 4b.
G. Task: “Describe your product idea that addresses a remote working need of this persona. Please write as
detailed a concept as possible, provide information from the persona to support your product, and explain what
need(s) the product addresses (min. 300 characters).”
H. Background information: estions were asked regarding age, gender, ethnic background, and job title (if
not currently working, then the most recent occupation). Aer this, the participants were thanked, and they were
redirected to the survey platform’s conrmation page.
3.5 Participant Information
e three pilot test participants were removed from the dataset. Additionally, 5 participants who failed an aention
check included in the survey were also removed. is led to a nal sample size of 235 participants. e sample had
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slightly more males (n = 142; 60.4%), 92 females (39.1%), and a single non-binary/third gender individual (0.4%). In
terms of age, the sample was relatively young (M = 34.51; SD = 7.858). e most represented ethnicity was European
(n = 189; 80.4%), followed by Latinx (n = 19; 8.1%), Asian (n = 17; 7.2%), African (n = 4; 1.7%), Middle Eastern (n = 3;
1.3%), and other (n = 3; 1.3%). e most represented countries were Portugal (n = 33; 14.0%), United Kingdom (n = 30;
12.8%), Poland (n = 24; 10.2%), Italy (n = 17; 7.22%), and Spain (n = 12; 5.1%), with the rest representing numerous other
countries.
Regarding the previous experience with personas, 91 (38.7%) participants reported no previous experience, 115
(48.9%) indicated they had previous experience, and 29 (12.3%) considered themselves procient.
Due to the low number of African and Middle Eastern participants, these participants were assigned into one
group, “Middle East and Africa,” which is conceptually similar to the cultural region of the Middle East and North
Africa (MENA4). e most typical professions among the participants were educators ( n = 36, 15.3%), soware
developers (n = 34, 14.5%), managers (n = 29, 12.3%), researchers (n = 27, 11.5%), IT professionals (n = 22, 9.4%),
designers (n = 18, 7.7%), and data scientists or analysts (n = 12, 5.1%).
3.6 Statistical Analysis
3.6.1 Control Variables
We compare the consistency of the results based on personas’ gender and ethnic background and participants’ gender
and ethnic background. is is primarily because gender and ethnic background were found to be inuential variables
in previous persona research [27,64,67] [43]. erefore, four control variables were included in the model: Persona
Gender, which indicates the persona’s gender (reference category, “Male”); Persona Ethnicity, which indicates the
persona’s ethnicity (reference category, “European origin”); Participant Ethnicity (reference category, “European”);
Participant Gender (reference category, “Female”); and Age (continuous variable indicating a participant’s age).
3.6.2 Manipulation Check
To conrm the eects of the manipulation, we asked participants to indicate whether the persona looked happy,
unhappy, or neutral. It was expected that happy personas were correctly identied as happy and unhappy as unhappy.
However, aer crossing the observed responses with the expected responses, it was noted that, for four treatments (see
Table 1), the participants did not identify the persona’s happiness as expected. Because of this, we used the perceived
picture happiness as the independent variable in lieu of the happy/unhappy assignment grouping variable. Potential
same-participant bias is not expected since the participant ow was randomized and accounted for all possible
combinations of personas.
Table 2: The observed ratio values. The percentages indicate how many responses from the participants corresponded with the
expected value. For example, if nine out of 10 participants chose “Happy” for the statement “The persona looked…”—with the
options being “Happy,” “Unhappy,” or “Neither”—then the observed ratio would be 90%. Instances in which less than three-fourths
of the participants agreed with the expected value are highlighted in red.
Observed
ratio
Khaled Hind Roger Sarah James Jane
Happy 84.21% 76.19% 72.97% 85.00% 69.23% 75.00%
Unhappy 95.00% 62.16% 76.19% 48.72% 77.50% 94.74%
4 hps://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/middle-east/north-africa
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3.6.3 Procedure
is structuring of the data allowed the hypothesis to be tested through multiple linear regressions (GLM) [23,42],
where the aforementioned variables were used as independent variables and the dependent variables were the various
persona and personality traits mentioned in the hypothesis section. In line with the nature of the variables, continuous
variables (Age and Perceived Happiness) were inserted as is, whereas categorical variables were re-coded as dummies
beforehand (with the reference categories as previously noted). Before conducting the analysis, the various
assumptions for multiple linear regression were checked. We began by verifying the absence of multicollinearity, that
is, a substantial degree of inter-correlation between the independent variables. For this purpose, we used the Tolerance
and variance ination factor (VIF) indicators. Tolerance values should be close to 1, whereas VIF typically indicates
issues with multicollinearity when it exceeds the threshold of 5 [52]. No evidence of multicollinearity was found, as
shown in Table 3: Multicollinearity diagnostics.
Table 3: Multicollinearity diagnostics.
Variable Tolerance VIF
Participant Age 0.967 1.035
Persona Gender (Female) 0.995 1.005
Persona Ethnicity (Arab) 0.736 1.359
Persona Ethnicity (Black) 0.732 1.365
Participant Ethnicity (Middle East and Africa) 0.987 1.013
Participant Ethnicity (African) 0.979 1.021
Participant Ethnicity (Latinx) 0.965 1.036
Participant Gender (Non-binary / third gender) 0.990 1.010
Participant Gender (Male) 0.975 1.025
Perceived Happiness 0.987 1.013
We proceed by evaluating the remaining assumptions for each multiple regression, notably linearity,
homoscedasticity, independence of the residuals, and normality [25]. is was done through visual inspection of the
residual plots, using the criteria established by Hair et al. (2014). A regression plot that meets the assumptions
manifests itself as a random distribution of residuals concentrated around the point of origin. None of the reported
regressions exhibited indication of assumption violation; as such, the analysis proceeded as normal. e residual plots
are included in Appendix B for reference. e subsequent analysis reported both unstandardized (B) and standardized
(Beta) coecients.
4 RESULTS
4.1 Summary of Results
Table 4 and show the main results for RQ1 (Does the use of happy/unhappy pictures alter persona users’ perceptions of
personas?). Support for the hypotheses is discussed in the following subsections.
4.2 RQ1: Eects on Users’ Perceptions of Personas
Figure 5 illustrates the scores obtained using happy and unhappy personas.
12
Empathy
PP
Usefulness
Realism
Completeness
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Unhappy Happy
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscien%ousness
Stability
Openness
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Unhappy Happy
(a) PPS scores (b) TIPI scores
Figure 5: Perception scores for happy and unhappy personas. The results indicate more positive personality traits (TIPI scores) are
associated with personas with happy pictures, but perceptions important for design tasks (PPS scores) are slightly higher when
using unhappy pictures.
H1: Picture happiness increases users’ empathy toward the persona. Aer taking into account the eects of
the control variables, perceived happiness was found to have no relation to perceived empathy ( B = -0.024, p = 0.252).
erefore, H1 is not supported; picture happiness does not aect the users’ perceived empathy toward the persona.
H2: Picture happiness decreases users’ perceptions of the personas’ pain points. Aer considering the
eects of the controls, perceived happiness was found to signicantly decrease the perceived pain points ( B = -0.251, p
< 0.001). erefore, H2 is supported; picture happiness decreases users’ perception of personas’ pain points.
H3: Picture happiness increases users’ perceptions that the persona is useful for a design task. Aer
taking into account the eects of the control variables, perceived happiness did not exhibit any signicant eect
regarding the perceived usefulness of a persona (B = -0.033, p = 0.274). erefore, H3 is not supported; picture
happiness does not aect the users’ perceptions of the persona as being useful for their task.
H4: Picture happiness decreases the users’ perceptions of the persona as being realistic. Aer taking into
account the eect of the control variables, increases in perceived happiness led to decreases in perceived realism ( B = -
0.063, p = 0.013). erefore, H4 is supported; picture happiness decreases users’ perceptions of a persona as being
realistic.
H5: Picture happiness increases the users’ perceptions of the persona having complete information.
Aer considering the eect of the control variables, no signicant eect could be found regarding the perceived
happiness of a persona and the degree of perceived completeness (B = -0.029, p = 0.357). erefore, H5 is not
supported; picture happiness does not aect the users’ perceptions of the persona as having complete information.
H6: Picture happiness increases the users’ perceptions of the persona’s personality. Aer considering the
control eects, it was determined that increased perception of a persona’s happiness led to increased perceptions of all
personality traits, notably, Extraversion (B = 0.245, p < 0.001), Agreeableness (B = 0.180, p < 0.180), Conscientiousness
(B = 0.178, p < 0.001), Emotional Stability (B = 0.320, p < 0.001), and Openness to Experience (B = 0.094, p < 0.001).
erefore, H6 is supported; picture happiness aects how users rate the personality of the personas. Personas with
happier pictures are perceived as more extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and open.
13
Table 4: Regression model coeicients for persona perceptions. A negative coeicient between the picture happiness variable (last row) and other variables indicates that
as picture happiness increases, persona perceptions generally decrease. See Table 1 for variable names and definitions.
EM PP US RE CO
Variable B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p
Participant Age 0.009
(0.005) 0.082 0.078 0.004
(0.010) 0.018 0.694 0.014
(0.007) 0.088 0.060 0.007
(0.006) 0.053 0.248
0.018*
(0.008) 0.111 0.018
Persona Gender (Female) 0.100
(0.077) 0.059 0.195 0.081
(0.151) 0.024 0.591 0.190
(0.113) 0.078 0.092 0.110
(0.094) 0.054 0.240 0.119
(0.118) 0.046 0.315
Persona Ethnicity (Middle
Eastern origin)
-0.059
(0.095) -0.033 0.533 0.458*
(0.186) 0.127 0.014 0.064
(0.139) 0.025 0.644 -0.023
(0.115) -0.011 0.842 -0.009
(0.145) -0.003 0.950
Persona Ethnicity (African
origin)
0.090
(0.095) 0.050 0.347 0.423*
(0.187) 0.117 0.024 0.055
(0.139) 0.021 0.693 0.076
(0.116) 0.035 0.510 0.117
(0.145) 0.043 0.421
Participant Ethnicity (Middle
East and Africa)
0.341
(0.192) 0.081 0.077 0.089
(0.376) 0.011 0.812 0.467
(0.281) 0.077 0.097 0.150
(0.233) 0.029 0.520 0.556
(0.293) 0.088 0.059
Participant Ethnicity (Asian
origin)
-0.388**
(0.150) -0.119 0.010 -0.308
(0.294) -0.047 0.295 -0.137
(0.220) -0.029 0.534 -0.498**
(0.182) -0.125 0.007 -0.117
(0.230) -0.024 0.609
Participant Ethnicity (Latinx) 0.156
(0.144) 0.050 0.280 0.622*
(0.282) 0.099 0.028 0.319
(0.210) 0.071 0.130 -0.010
(0.175) -0.003 0.954 0.284
(0.220) 0.060 0.197
Participant Gender (Non-
binary / third gender)
-0.540
(0.595) -0.041 0.365 -0.677
(1.165) -0.026 0.561 -1.320
(0.870) -0.070 0.130 -1.611*
(0.722) -0.102 0.026 -0.505
(0.908) -0.026 0.579
Participant Gender (Male) -0.112
(0.080) -0.065 0.159 -0.131
(0.156) -0.037 0.402 -0.100
(0.117) -0.040 0.392 -0.187
(0.097) -0.089 0.053 -0.082
(0.122) -0.031 0.502
Perceived Happiness -0.024
(0.021) -0.052 0.252 -0.251***
(0.040) -0.276 0.000 -0.033
(0.030) -0.051 0.274 -0.063*
(0.025) -0.114 0.013 -0.029
(0.031) -0.043 0.357
Notes: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05. Standard errors are in parenthesis. Persona Gender reference category is “Male”. Persona Ethnicity reference category is “White”. Participant
Ethnicity reference category is “European origin”. Participant Gender reference category is “Female”.
Table 5: Regression model coeicients for personality traits. A positive coeicient between the picture happiness variable (last row) and other variables indicates that as
picture happiness increases, personality traits generally increase. See Table 1 for variable names and definitions.
EX AG CN ES OP
Variable B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p B / SE Beta p
Participant Age 0.001
(0.006) 0.006 0.892 0.014*
(0.006) 0.111 0.011 0.007
(0.008) 0.041 0.366 0.011
(0.007) 0.070 0.090 0.002
(0.006) 0.018 0.698
Persona Gender (Female) 0.062
(0.089) 0.028 0.490 0.218*
(0.087) 0.108 0.012 0.373**
(0.124) 0.134 0.003 0.088
(0.102) 0.035 0.388 0.138
(0.091) 0.069 0.128
Persona Ethnicity (Middle
Eastern origin)
-0.434***
(0.110) -0.189 0.000 -0.109
(0.107) -0.051 0.309 -0.017
(0.153) -0.006 0.912 -0.073
(0.126) -0.027 0.566 -0.175
(0.112) -0.082 0.118
Persona Ethnicity (Black) -0.029
(0.110) -0.012 0.796 0.025
(0.107) 0.012 0.818 -0.179
(0.153) -0.061 0.243 0.221
(0.126) 0.083 0.081 0.022
(0.112) 0.010 0.845
Participant Ethnicity (Middle
East and Africa)
0.122
(0.222) 0.023 0.582 -0.121
(0.216) -0.024 0.576 -0.074
(0.309) -0.011 0.810 -0.226
(0.255) -0.036 0.375 0.127
(0.226) 0.026 0.573
Participant Ethnicity (Asian
origin)
-0.168
(0.174) -0.040 0.333 -0.174
(0.169) -0.044 0.305 -0.270
(0.241) -0.050 0.264 -0.242
(0.199) -0.050 0.225 -0.420*
(0.177) -0.108 0.018
Participant Ethnicity (Latinx) 0.255
(0.166) 0.064 0.126 -0.019
(0.162) -0.005 0.906 0.074
(0.231) 0.015 0.748 0.025
(0.191) 0.005 0.897 0.235
(0.169) 0.063 0.165
Participant Gender (Non-
binary / third gender)
0.600
(0.688) 0.036 0.384 -0.114
(0.670) -0.007 0.864 -0.266
(0.956) -0.012 0.781 0.358
(0.789) 0.018 0.650 -0.479
(0.699) -0.031 0.494
Participant Gender (Male) -0.014
(0.092) -0.006 0.883 -0.235**
(0.090) -0.114 0.009 -0.123
(0.128) -0.043 0.338 -0.079
(0.106) -0.030 0.456 -0.208*
(0.094) -0.101 0.027
Perceived Happiness 0.245***
(0.024) 0.426 0.000 0.180***
(0.023) 0.334 0.000 0.178***
(0.033) 0.242 0.000 0.320***
(0.027) 0.476 0.000 0.094***
(0.024) 0.176 0.000
Notes: *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05. Standard errors are in parenthesis. Persona Gender reference category is “Male”. Persona Ethnicity reference category is “White”. Participant
Ethnicity reference category is “European origin”. Participant Gender reference category is “Female”.
4.3 RQ2 Eect of Persona Gender and Ethnic Background
Two signicant eects were found regarding Persona Gender: the participants perceived female personas as more
agreeable (B = 0.218, p < .05) and conscientious (B = 0.373, p < .01) than male personas (see Figure 6). For ethnicity, the
pain points of personas of Middle Eastern origin were perceived more strongly (B = 0.458, p < .05) than those of
personas of European origin (see Figure 7). Interestingly, these personas were also perceived as less extroverted (B = -
0.434, p < .001) when compared to personas of European origin. e pain points of personas of African origin were also
perceived more strongly (B = 0.423, p < .05) than those of personas of European origin. Apart from these ndings, the
observed eects were consistent among persona genders and ethnic backgrounds.
Empathy
PP
Usefulness
Realism
Completeness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscien%ousness
Stability
Openness
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Female
Male
Score
Figure 6: Perception scores for male and female personas. Female personas were perceived as more agreeable and conscientious.
Empathy
PP
Usefulness
Realism
Completeness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscien%ousness
Stability
Openness
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Midd le Eastern
African
European
Score
Figure 7: Perception scores for the three persona ethnicities. Pain points (PP) of personas of Middle Eastern and African origin were
observed more strongly than those of personas of European origin.
4.4 RQ2 Eect of Participant Gender and Ethnic Background
Participants of Asian origin indicated less empathy for the personas ( B = -0.388, p < .01) and perceived the personas as
less realistic (B = -0.498, p < .05) and open (B = -0.420, p < .05) than participants of European origin (see Figure 8).
Participants of Latin origin tended to perceive the pain points of a persona more strongly (B = 0.622, p < 0.05) than
those of European origin. Additionally, male participants tended to view personas as less agreeable when compared to
female participants (B = -0.235, p < 0.01), as well as less open to experience (B = -0.208, p < 0.05) (see Figure 9). Apart
from these eects, participants with dierent genders or ethnic backgrounds provided consistent responses.
Empathy
PP
Usefulness
Realism
Completeness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscien%ousness
Stability
Openness
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Midd le East and Afric a
Asian
La%nx
Europ ean
Score
Figure 8: Persona scores by participant ethnic background. Participants of Asian origin indicated less empathy for personas and
viewed them as less realistic and open. Participants of Latin origin perceived the personas’ pain points more strongly.
Empathy
PP
Usefulness
Realism
Completeness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscien%ousness
Stability
Openness
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Female
Male
Score
Figure 9: Perception scores for male and female participants. Male participants viewed the personas as less agreeable and open.
4.5 RQ3: Users’ Engagement with the Persona
H7: Picture of happiness increases the users’ engagement with the persona. To address our third research
question, namely, whether participants spend less time viewing unhappy personas than happy ones, we conducted a
set of t-tests to compare the amount of time (in seconds) the participants spent with each persona type in the survey.
is information was recorded by an invisible form eld in altrics that enables observing participants’ time spent
16
on a given survey page. We included this question format in each persona page, and thus, we could retrieve the time
spent with “happy” and “unhappy” personas. is duration was used as a measure of engagement.
We used a t-test variant whose assumptions are robust to unequal variances (two-sample t-test assuming unequal
variances [67]) as the groups had unequal variances. ere was no signicant eect for duration, t(303.113) = -1.3, p =
0.194, despite “happy” personas (M = 68.4 seconds, SD = 166.3) aaining higher scores than “unhappy” personas (M =
53.2, SD = 63.9). is test used the assigned happy/unhappy persona treatments. e participants spent somewhat
more time with the happy personas, but this dierence was not statistically signicant. erefore, H7 was not
supported; the use of happy or unhappy persona pictures does not aect the level of engagement (i.e., duration of
interaction) with the persona.
4.6 RQ4: User Initial Solution Designs to a Persona’s Pain Points
e goal of the qualitative analysis is to investigate how the use of (un)happy persona pictures alters the initial design
outcomes in a user-centric product development task, specically the depth and breadth of the designed solutions that
the participants immediately came up with to remedy the pain points of happy versus unhappy personas. Since there
is no direct measure to assess and compare the eectiveness and depth of the initial design solutions, we relied on
several qualitative methods that analyzed the participants’ responses that describe their solutions. We surmised that
the initial design outcomes could be qualitatively compared by answering questions such as the following: (1) Did the
participants feel empathy toward the personas? (2) Did the participants understand the pain points of the personas? (3) Did
the participants nd the persona information useful in coming up with a solution design? (4) Did the participants nd the
persona realistic?
To address these questions, we performed a qualitative semantic coding of the data through a lexical analysis
[11,21] based on the calculation of word frequencies. We also qualitatively revisited the textual data based on the
context and semantically grouped lexicons, as needed. In our analysis, we qualitatively picked or determined lexicon
groups that could be associated with our research questions and ordered the words in the lexicon based on their
contextual valence [80]. Valence scoring can be done by a group of researchers based on their sense of positive versus
negative context [80] or by a single researcher [53]. Since all our semantic lexicons only contained a small number of
words (i.e., descriptors), a single researcher ordered their valence using their contextual importance to the research
question.
4.6.1 Expressions of Empathy
Our rst premise was aimed at seeing the eects of the persona pictures on participants’ empathy toward the persona.
To investigate this question further, we focused on the persona-address descriptors—the specic words, names, and
adverbs the participants used to address the persona in their wrien responses. We ordered the descriptors by their
potential to show empathy, ranging from “no mention,” which shows the least empathy, to “you,” which shows the
most empathy. e results are given in Table 6. Examples of each category are given below:
No mention of or bypassing the persona: e participant’s text either does not address the persona in
any way or bypasses the persona. Typically, the comments that make no mention of the personas only focus
on the product and its functionalities (e.g., “A system that would separate the work environment on a
computer from the personal environment. […] e system can only be turned on the following morning
during oce hours. e system would automatically save all work in progress, so no work is lost during the
automatic shutdown.” Participant #308 or P308 for short). Occasionally some comments bypass the persona
17
by extrapolating their product to a group of people instead of the specic persona provided (e.g., “My
product is an application for people who are not familiar with the use of technology.” P140).
Persona (or Person, Individual, User, Character, Customer) coupled with It or ey5: “is persona
needs a soware […that] could provide detailed information on how they are spending their workday so
they can see the paerns and improve their performance overall” (P1).
Persona (Person, Guy, Lady) coupled with He or She: “is persona has several issues about smart
working because he barely can separate work from everyday life” (P6); “is guy denitely needs a router
[…]” (P57); “I think routine and structure day will help this lady.” (P77)
First-name coupled with He or She: “[…] James is presented as very unhappy and struggling to balance
his work and home lives.” (P7); “I think the issues Sarah has are mainly service issues and lack of computer
usage experience. So, my solution would be a program installed in her computer […]” (P66)
You: “You don’t need a degree to start this business. However, you should polish your skills rst.” “Try
enrolling in an online course or reading graphic design books.” (P4); “Calm Down Buddy! is app is for you.
If you’re struggling separating work from leisure well, you’re not alone.” (P89)
Table 6: The frequency of persona-address descriptors based on specific personas. Percentages above 25% are highlighted. A
weighted score was also calculated, with “no mention” being worth 0 points (minimum) and “you” being worth 4 points at 1-point
increments for each category.
Persona Happines
s
No
Mention
Persona w/
It or ey
Persona w/
He or She
First-name
w/ He or She
You Weighted
Score (0-4)
James
Unhappy 5.1%
(n=2)
30.8%
(n=12)
48.7%
(n=19)
10.3%
(n=4)
5.1%
(n=2)
1.79
Happy 20.5%
(n=8)
17.9%
(n=7)
41.1%
(n=16)
17.9%
(n=7)
2.6%
(n=1)
1.64
Sarah
Unhappy 7.7%
(n=3)
15.4%
(n=6)
46.2%
(n=18)
28.2%
(n=11)
2.6%
(n=1)
2.03
Happy 7.5%
(n=3)
20.0%
(n=8)
50.0%
(n=20)
15.0%
(n=6)
7.5%
(n=3)
1.95
Jane
Unhappy 15.8%
(n=6)
21.1%
(n=8)
57.9%
(n=22)
2.6%
(n=1)
2.6%
(n=1)
1.55
Happy 20.0%
(n=8)
15.0%
(n=6)
47.5%
(n=19)
10%
(n=4)
7.5%
(n=3)
1.70
Khaled
Unhappy 10.0%
(n=4)
40.0%
(n=16)
35.0%
(n=14)
15.0%
(n=6)
0 1.55
Happy 18.4%
(n=7)
13.2%
(n=5)
50.0%
(n=19)
13.2%
(n=5)
5.3%
(n=2)
1.74
Roger
Unhappy 21.4%
(n=9)
19.1%
(n=8)
52.4%
(n=22)
4.8%
(n=2)
2.4%
(n=1)
1.48
Happy 18.9%
(n=7)
5.4%
(n=2)
51.4%
(n=19)
21.6%
(n=8)
2.7%
(n=1)
1.84
Hind
Unhappy 16.2%
(n=6)
13.5%
(n=5)
54.1%
(n=20)
13.5%
(n=5)
2.7%
(n=1)
1.73
Happy 14.3%
(n=6)
14.3%
(n=6)
61.9%
(n=26)
7.1%
(n=3)
2.4%
(n=1)
1.69
5 Although we recognize that singular “they” can used as a generic third-person pronoun [36] or, purposefully, to
avoid misgendering, in our persona cases wherein gender was specied clearly, we accepted it as a form of distancing
language.
18
e average weighted score for unhappy personas was x = 1.69, and for happy personas, it was x = 1.76, which was
a marginal dierence. e outliers were unhappy James and Khaled scoring lower and unhappy Sarah scoring higher,
thus, falling outside the mean. is led us to believe that there might be a gender-based treatment dierence. Men
scored lower than women both in the unhappy category (x = 1.61 vs. x = 1.77) and overall (x = 1.67 vs. x = 1.77). We
see this as an indication that unhappy female visuals (or female avatars in general) garner more empathy than their
male counterparts [38,79].
4.6.2 Expressions of Pain Points
Our second premise was aimed at seeing the eects of the persona pictures on participants’ perceptions of the
persona’s pain points. To investigate this question further qualitatively, we created a qualitative codebook [39] by
focusing on the verbs and modal verbs mobilized by the participants as pain-point descriptors in all the responses. We
based the grouping of the codebook on the valence scores of descriptors in an existing framework [53] by checking
how far away they are from the neutral score, whether in a positive or negative direction. As a result, we ended up
with three categories: weak valence, moderate valence, and strong valence. A researcher read all the comments and
coded each relevant sentence into the proper category. Although the coding predominantly followed the verb/valence
groupings that inspired the categories, the advantage of the qualitative assessment of each sentence was that it helped
evaluate some usage more correctly depending on context. e results are provided in Table 7. An example of each
category is given below:
Weak valence (imperatives, should, must, etc.): “Product for him should be complex with many functions.”
(P13); “e person should keep the baby at childcare center […]” (P47); “[…] this persona should work on a product or
organization where he could spend most of his day without having to rely on internet” (P53).
Moderate valence (need, benet, require, suggest, provide, come in handy, could use, be useful, etc.): “He
might benet from some kind of scheduling assistant/app […]” (P17); “I would suggest a phone app to time work and
leisure activities to make sure that Sarah does not get carried away […]” (P24); “I think she needs a product to beer
split her day between work and personal activities” (P21).
Strong valence (help, support, struggle, suer, having [a problem, issue, or trouble], etc.): “I think that I
could help him by giving him a way to get isolated from everyday life” (P6); “e persona struggles with self-discipline
and organizational issues” (P9); “It's important to see what her problems are” (P122).
Table 7: The frequency of pain point descriptors based on specific personas. The dominant category(s) is highlighted. A weighted
score was also calculated, with “weak valence” being worth 0 points (minimum) and “strong valence” being worth 2 points, with a 1-
point increment for each category.
Weak Valence Moderate Valence Strong Valence Weighted
Score (0-2)
James Unhappy 23.1 % (n=9) 35.9% (n=14) 41.0% (n=16) 1.18
Happy 46.2% (n=18) 23.1% (n=9) 30.8% (n=12) .85
Sarah Unhappy 25.6% (n=10) 38.5% (n=15) 35.9% (n=14) 1.10
Happy 27.5% (n=11) 25.0% (n=10) 47.5% (n=19) 1.20
Jane Unhappy 36.8% (n=14) 28.9% (n=11) 34.3% (n=13) .97
Happy 42.5% (n=17) 35.0% (n=14) 22.5% (n=9) .80
Khaled Unhappy 52.5% (n=21) 22.5% (n=9) 25.0% (n=10) .73
Happy 50.0% (n=19) 21.1% (n=8) 28.9% (n=11) .79
Roger Unhappy 45.2% (n=19) 33.4% (n=14) 21.4% (n=9) .76
19
Weak Valence Moderate Valence Strong Valence Weighted
Score (0-2)
Happy 32.4% (n=12) 45.9% (n=17) 21.7% (n=8) .89
Hind Unhappy 40.5% (n=15) 40.5% (n=15) 19.0% (n=7) .78
Happy 52.4% (n=22) 33.4% (n=14) 14.2% (n=6) .62
e average weighted score for unhappy personas was x = 0.92 and for happy personas x = 0.86, another marginal
dierence that highlights that participants were spoke more strongly about the pain points of the unhappy personas.
ere were some stark dierences between individual personas. e problems of unhappy James and Jane were more
recognized, but the problems of happy James and Jane were mentioned less oen. e pain points of Khaled and Hind
were not voiced, regardless of whether they were happy or unhappy. Sarah’s pain points, on the other hand, were
more strongly voiced both when happy and unhappy. is led us to check the results from a racial perspective (see
Table 8).
e results conrmed that the pain points of personas of Middle Eastern origin were not recognized (or were
handled in a weaker way) regardless of whether they looked happy or unhappy. e pain points of personas of
European origin were more easily recognized when they were unhappy; however, the pain points of personas of
African origin were voiced even if they were not unhappy. In other words, (1) it was easy to imagine personas of
European origin struggling when they look unhappy; (2) it was easy to imagine personas of African origin struggling
even if they look happy; (3) it was not easy to imagine the struggles of personas of Middle Eastern origin at all. is
could be explained by bias brought by the participants. Previous studies suggest that race in prole pictures aects
interactions in virtual environments such as Airbnb [17] and online loan services [63].
Table 8: Results of pain-point descriptor analysis from a racial perspective.
Weighted Score (0-
2)
Personas of European
origin
Personas of Middle Eastern
origin
Personas of African origin
Unhappy 1.08 0.75 0.93
Happy 0.82 0.70 1.05
4.6.3 Expressions of Usefulness
e third premise investigated the eects of the persona pictures on participants’ perceptions of the usefulness of the
persona. Although our survey included a self-reported usefulness item for the personas, we wanted to bolster our
results with an additional response analysis for further insights. We accepted usefulness in relation to the details and
depth of the solution and/or product that the participants could come up with. e more descriptive the participants
could get about their solution and/or product, the more useful we considered the persona prole to be. e two
shortcomings of this method are that (1) there is no previous research that mobilizes response length in relation to the
usefulness of a persona, and (2) in some cases, concise answers might be perceived as more meaningful textual
responses. However, previous studies [3,81] oer response length as an imperfect counterpart for the quality of
responses in various survey contexts. Accordingly, we used two types of data to check this: we looked rst at the
percentages of sentences in each response that were wrien to explain the product (thus, the subject of the sentence
was the product/solution) and second at the word count of each product description section. e results are given in
Table 9.
20
Table 9: The percentages of the responses that relate to a solution and/or product description, as well as word counts.
Persona Happiness Percentage (%) Mean (x) Word Count Mean (x)
James Unhappy 63.14 50.86
Happy 57.78 46.94
Sarah Unhappy 74.78 73.27
Happy 54.45 40.87
Jane Unhappy 43.81 38.54
Happy 54.89 34.07
Khaled Unhappy 68.89 59.60
Happy 60.89 56.60
Roger Unhappy 59.23 41.20
Happy 29.36 22.54
Hind Unhappy 50.19 41.47
Happy 49.45 41.94
Male Personas Unhappy 61.96 49.25
Happy 54.82 45.65
Female Personas Unhappy 56.01 51.25
Happy 53.17 38.80
Personas of European
origin
Unhappy 50.80 42.74
Happy 60.66 45.82
Personas of African
origin
Unhappy 67.00 57.24
Happy 41.90 31.70
Personas of Middle
Eastern origin
Unhappy 59.17 50.77
Happy 55.54 49.04
All Personas Unhappy 58.99 50.25
Happy 54.15 42.85
Looking at all the responses, almost half of the text addressed a solution and/or product for the persona, with
unhappy personas sparking a marginally higher density of text both in percentage and word count (58.99% versus
54.15%; 50.25 words versus 42.85 words). One of the outliers was happy Roger, who had signicantly lower solutions
and/or products oered to him. at result qualitatively marks him as a less useful persona in terms of soliciting
solutions from the participants. One explanation could be that since Roger looked happy, so participants did not feel
the need to create solutions for his problems. However, this does not explain why that was not the case for other
happy personas. e other explanation could involve Roger’s racial identity; however, that does not explain the case of
happy Sarah, who is also of African origin. As a result, we believe that this stands at an intersection of persona picture,
gender, and racial identity. Other outliers were unhappy Sarah and Khaled, who had more breadth in their solution
discussions. e density of discussions around unhappy Sarah is signicant and, again, seems to sit at an intersection
of persona picture, gender, and racial identity. Results from all personas showed that happy personas of African origin
and happy female personas had shorter descriptions of solutions and/or products. However, the imbalance between
Sarah and Roger (both personas of African origin) remains unexplained.
4.6.4 Expressions of Realism, Completeness, and Personality
For our H4–H6 (which are aimed at seeing the eects of the persona pictures on participants’ perceptions of a
persona’s realism, completeness, and personality, respectively), we studied the 471 wrien responses, identied and
21
grouped those that mention the said aspects, and coded each group into subcategories. e results are given in Table
10 and Table 11 along with detailed information on each coding.
4.6.4.1 Realism
We coded the segments about the realism of the personas under ve categories: storifying, disbelief, environment,
family, and baby.
Storifying emerges when the participants create additional details about the personas and their lives in ways that
were not mentioned, hinted at, or highlighted in the prole. For example, “As he is very procient and successful, and I
assume also rich then he surely has money for holiday” (P363) or “It make not help [sic] that the baby wakes oen in
the night and he is also tired which will have a negative eect on his work” (P14). Neither case has any information on
the persona’s wealth or sleeping paerns. Storifying is a phenomenon that was previously identied in other persona
studies [46,49,50]. Typically, if a user nds a persona realistic enough (e.g., the persona resembles somebody in the
user’s life or has other parallels to the user’s own life), then the user will start projecting real-life experiences and
stories onto the persona. We accept this as an indication of realism. In our data, most stories emerged for unhappy
male personas, with James being the dominant source. Happy personas displayed almost no storifying eect (7.1%).
Family and baby categories might be seen as an extension of storifying; however, since they have other
connotations, they were mentioned separately. e proles state that the persona has a 6-month-old baby. is
information is mentioned in the responses in relation to real-life experiences of how challenging it is to live with an
infant. Of the baby mentions, 63% were made for female personas—a cognitive gender bias that was identied
previously between motherhood and labor prospects of women [9]. An interesting reversal was that baby mentions
were more prominent for unhappy female versus happy male personas. Also, there were some instances where the
personas were assumed to have other family members in the form of partners. is was more common for male
personas assumed to have wives (67%) who could/should take care of the baby while the father works.
Table 10: The results of coding in text segments relating to the realism of the personas.
Persona Segments
(N=130)
Storifying
10.8%
(n=14)
Disbelief
11.5%
(n=15)
Environment
18.5%
(n=24)
Family
13.8%
(n=18)
Baby
45.4%
(n=59)
James Unhappy 6 3 2
Happy 2 3 3
Sarah Unhappy 2 1 5 5
Happy 4
Jane Unhappy 1 2 2 10
Happy 3 2 6
Khaled Unhappy 2 2 1 2
Happy 1 1 1 3 5
Roger Unhappy 2 2 3 5
Happy 72 2 5
Hind Unhappy 5 3 6
Happy 1 1 6
James Unhappy
Happy
Male
Personas
Unhappy 10 7 4 9
Happy 1 10 3 8 13
Female Unhappy 3 1 12 5 21
22
Persona Segments
(N=130)
Storifying
10.8%
(n=14)
Disbelief
11.5%
(n=15)
Environment
18.5%
(n=24)
Family
13.8%
(n=18)
Baby
45.4%
(n=59)
Personas Happy 4 2 1 16
e environment coding mentioned the physical working conditions of the personas. Although there was no
textual information about the physical working conditions of the personas, some participants mobilized the content of
the persona photo to make suggestions. e suggestions ranged from using a beer chair or table to being in a room
with a door where isolation would be easier. ese codes were more prominent for unhappy personas and especially
for unhappy women. An interesting side note is three participants claiming that unhappy Sarah and Jane both work at
a kitchen table—neither photo shows the women in the kitchen. is is possibly another cognitive slip driven by
gender bias.
Finally, we found some instances where participants voiced disbelief about the persona, for example, “I nd it hard
to imagine that a successful manager can have not so good [sic] computer skills” (P259), “I do not understand how it is
possible for someone in a management position to work remotely with good result [sic] without having a fast internet
connection” (P333), or “e fact that the persona looks happy makes me think they are okay with working remote
[sic]” (P424). ese instances were mostly focused on happy Roger (70% of the segments from male personas and 67%
of the segments from all personas). Previously, happy Roger was identied as the persona with the fewest solutions
oered.
4.6.4.2 Completeness
We found 26 segments about the completeness of the personas and coded them under two categories: company
information (30.8%, n = 8) and uncertainty (69.2%, n = 18).
e company information segments were all made for unhappy personas (Sarah 25%, Jane 12.5%, Khaled 37.5%, and
Hind 25%) and were complaints or assumptions that the personas’ companies should solve their problems either by
providing them with upgraded equipment or faster connections. Since our persona proles did not mention specic
information about their work and company relationships, this marked a perspective that might be perceived as
incomplete in the persona proles we used. e uncertainty segments marked instances when the participant was not
sure how to help the persona or mentioned that they had lile faith in their solution, such as “He could probably do
with some sort of training … but these don't really seem necessary” (P422), “It’s dicult to say because I don’t have
enough information about the person” (P421), or “I don’t know what kind of product it can be” (P392). ese segments
were mainly concentrated on unhappy Khaled (22.3%, n = 4) and happy Sarah (16.7%, n = 3), with happy Khaled and
Roger each having two, and happy/unhappy James and Jane and unhappy Sarah each having one.
4.6.4.3 Personality
To understand how the participants perceived the personas’ personalities, we looked for words that were used to
describe the personalities, and we found 59 segments that we coded to be either negative (55.9%, n = 33) or positive
(44.1%, n = 26).
Table 11: The results of coding in text segments relating to the personalities of the personas.
Persona Happiness Negative Positive
Male Personas Unhappy 15 4
Happy 4 13
23
Persona Happiness Negative Positive
Female Personas Unhappy 14 6
Happy 3
Personas of European origin Unhappy 14 4
Happy 1 4
Personas of African origin Unhappy 8 5
Happy 6
Personas of Middle Eastern origin Unhappy 7 1
Happy 3 6
All Personas Unhappy 29 10
Happy 4 16
As expected, negative personality descriptors were mostly focused on unhappy personas. Also, unhappy personas
of European origin had almost twice the number of negative descriptors than personas of African or Middle Eastern
origin, which was a surprising result. Although it is hard to pinpoint an exact reason for this racial divide, it may be
that men of European origin are seen as a more advantageous social category, which results in men of European origin
aracting more criticism when seen as unhappy. e most common negative descriptors were stressed (36.4%, n = 12)
and unhappy (9.1%, n = 3), with instances of afraid, anxious, distracted, and pessimism, among others.
Interestingly, both unhappy and happy personas received positive personality descriptors, with happy personas
having more (61.5%). is is mainly because, although happy men signicantly aracted more positive comments
(76.5%) among men, unhappy women aracted more positive comments (66.6%) among women. Much like the
explanation of the previous result, this may be due to women being seen as a comparatively disadvantageous category.
As a result, they received positive comments for support and encouragement when they looked unhappy. In terms of
origins, the unhappy Middle Eastern personas received a signicantly lower number of positive comments than the
happy ones. is was not the case for the happy and unhappy personas of African and European origins, which
received an equal distribution of positive comments. (us, there was less encouragement for unhappy personas of
Middle Eastern origin.) e commonly used positive descriptors were comfortable (7.8%, n = 2), reliable (7.8%, n = 2),
happy (7.8%, n = 2), and focused (7.8%, n = 2), with instances of motivated, open for learning, and successful, among
others.
ese results indicate that for an initial design task to benet from positive perceptions of personalities, a happy
man or an unhappy woman would be the most useful along the lines of gender, and a Middle Eastern persona would
be the least useful in terms of ethnicity. However, the second part could be translated as the need for using a persona
prole that is ethnically closer to the participants.
5 DISCUSSION
5.1 Theoretical Contributions
Determining “why and how personas work” and showing their real value for design outcomes [69] are quintessential
aims in design studies [83]. e quantitative results indicate that happier persona pictures signicantly decrease
realism and pain point perception. e less happy a persona looks, the more realistic it seems and the more intense its
pain points are perceived in a design task. For this part, the results support the use of unhappy pictures as a way to
enhance a designer’s immersive experience with personas (Design Implication 1). Furthermore, the results indicate
no downside of decreasing persona engagement when using unhappy pictures.
24
e fact that a happy picture decreases the users’ pain point perception is reasonable and expected. (If you are
happy, are you really having troubles?) e fact that picture happiness does not aect a persona’s usefulness implies
that the persona’s happiness is not directly related to usefulness. Similarly, our ndings suggest that happiness is not
related to the persona’s completeness. e fact that picture happiness decreases the realism of the persona is in line
with previous ndings concerning the eect of stock photos [72]. Unexpectedly, there was no statistically signicant
dierence between unhappy and happy personas. One would expect someone unhappy to evoke empathy, but this was
not the case.
Our results showed that the rst-impression “mood” of the persona aects how its personality is judged, extending
the work on personas and personality traits [4,5]. ese Big Five personality ratings maer since they may inuence
design outcomes, and dierent design solutions might be created for introverted personas compared to extroverted
ones.
As expected, users tend to extrapolate the persona’s personality from a single picture: therefore, the momentary
“mood” of the persona aects how its personality is judged. To lessen this eect—that is, to increase the range of
perception of personality—multiple pictures could be added to portray the persona in dierent moods (e.g., happy,
unhappy, neutral) (Design Implication 2). is could possibly alleviate the rst-impression eect of users associating
the persona with a specic (positive or negative) type of personality based on a single picture alone.
5.2 Cultural and Gender Eects
Personas provide a vehicle toward inclusive design by portraying users from dierent cultures [27] [13]. Our ndings
show that varying the persona’s origin can have real consequences for how the persona is applied to design tasks. e
qualitative analysis outlined the dierences that existed along racial lines—the easiest to recognize were the pain
points of personas of European origin, and the hardest to recognize were the pain points of personas of Middle Eastern
origin.
Unhappy Roger was found both less useful and less realistic. Although there was no clear explanation for this, we
believe that the phenomenon stands at the intersection of ethnic identity and gender. e participants were more
prone to (1) creating stories around unhappy male personas; (2) bringing up a baby and family for unhappy female
personas; (3) assuming the existence of partners for male personas; and (4) using negative personality descriptors for
unhappy men but, in contrast, positive personality descriptors for unhappy women.
ese results indicate that the participants tried to come up with explanations around the unhappiness of men and
used negative descriptors for them, but the participants were also quick to accept the unhappiness of women due to
having a baby and family duties and used positive descriptors for them. e participants were the least empathetic
toward the personas with unhappy male pictures and found it easier to empathize with unhappy female personas.
As such, the ndings tie back to the discussion on stereotypical thinking associated with personas and if
stereotypes are indeed inevitable when designing with personas [84]. Our ndings suggest that stereotyping takes
place; however, it is not certain if this aects the design outcomes negatively. It appears that the design outcomes can
be detailed despite culture and gender aecting their content. erefore, the question of stereotyping requires further
study to delineate when stereotyping becomes harmful and when it is acceptable (i.e., non-harmful) for design
outcomes.
Overall, we speculate that the gender stereotypes in society can explain some of the dierences we observed.
Characterizing this stereotype, we can conclude that society does not like unhappy (should we dare to say, weak) men
but wants to protect and support unhappy women. As a result, a design lesson could be as follows (Design
25
Implication 3): If the task requires the participants to empathize with the persona, use a happy man instead of an
unhappy one, but also use an unhappy woman instead of a happy one. On the other hand, unhappy white men are
described very negatively. It almost appears as if the participants were thinking, “You are already a member of an
advantaged social group; why are you complaining?”
Also, ethnicity is a factor. e pain point perception was the highest for the personas of Middle Eastern origin.
However, this does not necessarily mean that the participants sympathize with the personas. e fact that Middle
Eastern personas are seen to struggle with remote work could also be perceived from the point of view of racial
proling so that Middle Eastern people are seen as less capable with technology (a negative stereotype). In fact, the
qualitative ndings suggest that Middle Eastern personas are at a disadvantage of being understood and empathized
with. ese ndings could be explained by the participants’ ethnicities (predominance of people of European origin); if
more participants were from the Middle East, the results could have been dierent.
While more research is needed to ascertain to which degree ethnic (dis)similarity aect perceiving and using
personas for design, given our limited evidence, we would encourage persona creators to “play it safe” by ensuring
that the cultural match between the personas and participants is not too wide to negatively aect empathy (Design
Implication 4). is recommendation may be controversial since the purpose of personas is to increase empathy (e.g.,
bridge cultural gaps). Nonetheless, our results do not show this purpose being realized; hence, it is uncertain how well
personas mitigate stereotypes and how much they instead reinforce them.
5.3 Limitations and Future Research Directions
As with all research, there are limitations and areas for further analysis. A limitation of this work involves the limited
ethnic diversity of the participants: We would have preferred having more varied ethnic backgrounds, but the sample
mostly consisted of people of European origin. Future studies can recruit participants from other ethnic backgrounds.
Moreover, future research could experiment with more personas of dierent ethnic backgrounds (e.g., Asian and
Latinx). Due to practical limits imposed by our study design, we were constrained to three personas. We decided that
the inclusion of personas of Middle Eastern origin was important, as previous studies have applied personas of Asian
origin [63,64], but as far as we know, perceptions toward personas of Middle Eastern origin have not been tested in
previous research.
Future research could also investigate if and how “unhappy” personas stand out if mixed with “happy” personas. In
particular, unhappy personas may beer stand out from happy ones if the majority of the personas are happy (and
vice versa). e happy persona thus becomes more visible and will receive more aention and be beer remembered
than its visual surroundings [26]. is might have (un)intended consequences for the design process, depending on
whether the goal is to highlight a certain persona or to try to ensure the even aention of users to all personas. In
conjunction with this, additional persona perception aributes, such as likeness, could be studied. Also, instead of
images, the research could be expanded to investigate the eect of the textual information only expressing the pain
points with neutral images. Although we counterbalanced the text and images in this study, it would be interesting to
tease apart the eect of the text only.
Furthermore, the degree or nuances of unhappiness in the pictures could be varied. Most of the pictures we used
could be characterized as “moderately unhappy”; however, there is also a picture material where the person appears to
be strongly dissatised, even depressed (i.e., there is a wide range of emotion). e unhappiness can be associated with
sadness or frustration. e strength of the unhappiness could further aect how the persona is perceived; higher levels
26
of agony might result in heightened pain point perception. erefore, purposefully varying the levels and types of
unhappiness provides a logical continuum to our work.
While the ndings support the association between a persona’s happiness and personality aribution, how this
association aects design outcomes should be studied further. With our experiment seing [47] focusing primarily on
the eect of happy and unhappy pictures on perceptions, we were limited in only investigating the initial design
outputs [69]. Future research employing eld study methodologies could investigate the eect perceptions of personas
along a spectrum of tasks in the design process, especially communication within the design team and with other
stakeholders, in a more realistic seing [47]. Finally, future research should focus on varying the design task. It may be
that for some tasks, happy pictures are beer; for other tasks, unhappy ones may be beer. Task types may require
dierent levels of user empathy and pain point immersion, so the implications of the use of pictures might dier, even
when the personas contain pain points. In our research design, participants performed the tasks alone. Future research
that relies on executing the tasks in a group environment is also needed.
6 CONCLUSION
Should designers of personas use happy or unhappy pictures? It seems that it depends, as there are trade-os. Users
perceive the pain points of the persona more strongly when using unhappy pictures than when using happy pictures.
Users also nd personas with unhappy pictures more realistic than those with happy pictures. However, happy
pictures seem to present a more positive impression of the personas in terms of personality traits. In general, the
evidence supports the use of unhappy pictures to strengthen the users’ perception of personas as real people with real
problems.
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Appendix A – Persona treatments
Pain Point Profile 1
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Pain Point Profile 2
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Appendix B – Residual plots
36
37
38
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