Value-led personas : a methodology to promote sustainable user-centered design?

This paper explores how values can be the focus in user-centered design through the use of value-led personas. Its starting point was exploring value-driven alternative models for micro-business based on the principles of open source. The research documented in this paper is a participatory design process with two emergent micro-businesses as co-researchers. The stakeholders of each micro-business were presented as value-led personas, representing a deep understanding of their values and beliefs gained from ethnographic data. In this project, the use of value-led personas effectively communicated the core values of each micro-business and enabled participants to visualize how stakeholders would interact with the organization. Value-led personas thus have the potential to be an effective communication technique in user-centered design that can lead to purposeful action.