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Persona Design in Participatory Agile Software Development

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HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Universal Access and Inclusive Design (HCII 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12426))

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Abstract

Personas are a popular method of user centered design (UCD) in technical product development and have become indispensable in software development. In agile software development, which is nowadays predominantly used in modern projects, personas do not have a role of their own. User needs are usually introduced into development via the Product Owner role by means of user stories. Especially when software is developed for user groups with special needs, it is often difficult for developers to understand the needs of the users based on common user stories.

The study presented in this paper was conducted as part of the EU-funded research and development project Easy Reading. It demonstrates how personas for users with learning difficulties can be designed in inclusive research teams and how they can be successfully embedded into the agile development process.

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Acknowledgements

The work presented in this paper is part of the Easy Reading project and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 780529. Without the support of the colleagues at PIKSL, Proqualis and DART this research would not have been possible. Special appreciation is owed to the colleagues with learning difficulties, who have always proven the importance and value of their contributions to participatory research and development of the Easy Reading framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TU Dortmund University, Emil-Figge-Str. 50, 44227, Dortmund, Germany

    Susanne Dirks

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  1. Susanne Dirks
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Correspondence to Susanne Dirks .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Crete and Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Greece

    Constantine Stephanidis

  2. Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Greece

    Margherita Antona

  3. Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Qin Gao

  4. Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Jia Zhou

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Dirks, S. (2020). Persona Design in Participatory Agile Software Development. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Gao, Q., Zhou, J. (eds) HCI International 2020 – Late Breaking Papers: Universal Access and Inclusive Design. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12426. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60149-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60149-2_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-60148-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-60149-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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