Giving a voice to personas in the design of e-government identity processes

Abstract

Identity processes, such as enrolment and authentication, can have a negative impact on the user’s experience. By using personas designers get a better understanding of the end-user during the design process. Personas represent a user archetype to assist in the development of [digital] products. However this technique involves a measure of subjective interpretation. Following a qualitative empirical exercise we extend the persona concept to include statistical capabilities in order to inform the decision making process through measurable and comparable feedback. This feedback indicates how acceptable an identity mechanism is for a specific group of users. For this purpose we propose calibrated personas, an extension of the persona design tool that encapsulates the necessary regression coefficients which can help us predict perceived workload and users’ willingness to complete a task given specific design decisions.