Abstract
The focus of this paper is a development process of ‘Personas’; fictitious characters are used to reflect on norms and perspectives of practice. Although reflective practice is a well‐known process to enhance and support learning, improvement, development, etc., it is not easy to implement. Drawing on theories of action, this paper describes learning gained through using the Persona method within a research project called the Future Factory. The process of developing a Persona includes a reflective examination of the case approached and an analysis and Persona creation development that go hand‐in‐hand. Lessons learned are that the process of creating Personas has contributed to a critical reflection of investigation contexts and that both the technique itself and the process of creating Personas has contributed to re‐framing practice among participants in the Future Factory project.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to all of those who participated in the activities within the project and thereby contributed to it through their experience and expertise. Without them the project could not have been conducted. In particular, they would like to acknowledge the research team member Stina Johansson for her contribution to interviews and workshops in the project, and their colleague Anders Berglund for the photographs. The Future Factory project is funded by AFA Insurance, FAS (Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research) and the European Regional Development Fund.
Notes
1. In total we have several hours of video material; here we present a small part of that. We use the word ‘summary’ since it is difficult to transcribe a video‐filmed dialogue exactly as it is spoken and since the discussion in total would take up too much space