A Survey of 15 Years of Data-Driven Persona Development

ABSTRACT

Data-driven persona development unifies methodologies for creating robust personas from the behaviors and demographics of user segments. Data-driven personas have gained popularity in human-computer interaction due to digital trends such as personified big data, online analytics, and the evolution of data science algorithms. Even with its increasing popularity, there is a lack of a systematic understanding of the research on the topic. To address this gap, we review 77 data-driven persona research articles from 2005–2020. The results indicate three periods: (1) Quantification (2005–2008), which consists of the first experiments with data-driven methods, (2) Diversification (2009–2014), which involves more pluralistic use of data and algorithms, and (3) Digitalization (2015–present), marked by the abundance of online user data and the rapid development of data science algorithms and software. Despite consistent work on data-driven personas, there remain many research gaps concerning (a) shared resources, (b) evaluation methods, (c) standardization, (d) consideration for inclusivity, and (e) risk of losing in-depth user insights. We encourage organizations to realistically assess their data-driven persona development readiness to gain value from data-driven personas.

Acknowledgements

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

Notes

1. https://www.dropbox.com/s/7dvewzy4ry7npr6/ONLINE%20SUPPLEMENTARY%20MATERIAL_csur.docx?dl=0

2. https://scikit-learn.org/stable/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joni Salminen

Joni Salminen is currently a research scientist at Qatar Computing Research Institute, HBKU; and at Turku School of Economics. His current research interests include automatic persona generation from social media and online analytics data, the societal impact of machine decisionmaking (#algoritmitutkimus), and related social computing topics.

Kathleen Guan

Kathleen Guan is a research student in Neuroscience and Psychopathology through a joint graduate program between University College London and Yale School of Medicine. She has a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service in International Law from Georgetown University, and research training in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.

Soon-Gyo Jung

Soon-Gyo Jung is a software engineer focused on implementing data analytics systems at Qatar Computing Research Institute. He received a B.E. degree in computer software from the Kwangwoon University, Seoul, Korea, in 2014, and an M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Korea, in 2016.

Bernard J. Jansen

Bernard J. Jansen is currently a Principal Scientist in the social computing group of the Qatar Computing Research Institute. He is a graduate of West Point and has a Ph.D. in computer science from Texas A&M University. Professor Jansen is editor-in-chief of the journal, Information Processing & Management (Elsevier).