
Case Study: Supporting the changing needs of students and their international experiences
Lee Carlton, The Transformation Team
Simone Cilia, Learning Enhancement & Academic Development Services
Celine Reynaud, Learning Enhancement & Academic Development Services
Student & Staff Personas
Personas help create reliable and realistic representations of key users. They are compiled through research and are commonly used when designing a service. This approach ensures that the needs and perspectives of students and staff at the University are met and fully understood.
They can be used in any part of the design process. At the beginning, they may help in establishing who the potential users are, what might their needs be, and where improvements could be made to enhance their experience. They also maintain focus on the needs of users throughout the design process, enabling better decision-making by testing and evaluating solutions against them.
To meet the changing needs of students and staff at the University, creating personas will help teams to identify user behaviours, understand who their users are, and enable better decision-making that is focused on user needs and goals. It’s a service design approach that is becoming more widely used and it does not need to be a complicated process.