Cognitive styles and personas
Nicola Marsden, Monika Pröbster, Mirza Ehsanul Haque, Julia Hermann · 2017
Empathy with users is seen as crucial in the design process. Empathising with users is not trivial, especially if they are different from the design team, e.g. have a different gender or age. Additionally, people differ in the extent to which they empathise and have emotional responses towards others. In an empirical study, we explored the effect of different cognitive styles on the perception of personas. Our results indicate that an empathising cognitive style might alleviate an egocentric approach to design and that both empathising and systemising cognitive styles can be helpful in understanding personas. We suggest further research into the role of cognitive styles regarding the use and composition of personas.