Enhancing Collective Creative Design: An Exploratory Study on the Influence of Static and Dynamic Personas in a Virtual Environment

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to extend an existing method, ‘the personas’, and to develop a ‘dynamic persona’ in a virtual environment. To determine the interest of such a dynamic persona, we compared the influence of dynamic vs static personas in groups composed of two professionals (a designer and an ergonomist) who had to deal with either a dynamic or a static persona, while being engaged in a creative task. Their creative performances were also compared with those of 11 groups of three lay-participants who performed the same task, in the same virtual environment, with the same communication modality (i.e. chat). Moreover, we analysed the quality of collaboration in groups with personas and their level of empathy toward the dynamic or static personas. Results tend to be in favour of the dynamic persona condition, concerning the fluency and originality of ideas, and with regard to quality of collaboration and empathy.

KEYWORDS:

• design
• creativity
• personas
• virtual environment
• empathy

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the CREATIVENESS French National Research Agency contract (ANR-12-SOIN-0005-01), concerning creative activities in virtual environments. We also would like to thank the professionals who took part in the study described in this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nathalie Bonnardel

Nathalie Bonnardel is a full professor in cognitive psychology and ergonomics, at Aix-Marseille University. She conducts her research in the Centre for Research on the Psychology of Cognition, Language and Emotion (PsyCLE), where she is the head of the team on ‘Cognition, Emotion, and Expertise’. She is also in charge of the Master’s degree in Ergonomics: human factors and information system engineering. She analyses design activities and creativity, in order to model cognitive processes and contribute to the development of computational support systems.

Mathieu Forens

Mathieu Forens is a PhD student in cognitive psychology and ergonomics at Aix Marseille Université. He conducts his research in the PsyCLE laboratory and he analyses the impact of communication modalities on collective creative activities.

Maxime Lefevre

Maxime Lefevre is a Master’s student in Ergonomics: human factors and information system engineering, and he conducts his research into personas’ impact on creativity in the PsyCLE laboratory.