On 26 August 2014 the Center for Persona Research and Application hosted a seminar on International User Studies and Personas at the IT University of Copenhagen. 40 people from 35 different companies participated. Read more about the seminar here: http://infinit.dk/dk/hvad_kan_vi_goere_for_dig/viden/reportager/seminar_on_international_user_studies_and_personas.htm

1. INTERNATIONAL USER STUDIES
AND PERSONAS

2. Agenda for this presentation
Introduction to the study
A proces perspective on international user studies:
• Initial planning
• International data collection
• Perceptions of international users
• International personas
Summary
• Findings
• Empirical maturity model

3. The study
• A study on how companies collect and present data
about users on international markets
• 15 qualitative interviews in 11 different companies
• All interviews were held in Denmark
- Large Danish companies with international users and
subdivisions
- Danish subdivisions of large international companies
• Primarily companies that work with software
development and digital solutions

4. INITIAL PLANNING

5. Deciding where to collect data:
Strategic markets are prioritized
• A key decision is where, geographically, to collect
data about the users
• In most cases the decision is made by management
or the client
• The decision is typically based on what they
consider to be the company’s most important,
strategic markets

6. Where to collect data:
Pragmatic issues sometimes overrule strategy
• Sometimes data is collected in other countries than
originally decided
• And also in other countries/regions than what might
yield optimal knowledge
• Economic and pragmatic considerations related to
travelling, language, etc. overrule strategy
• E.g.: it might be decided to do user interviews in England
instead of an Eastern European country, because it
reduces the language barrier for all involved

7. Planning the study
User researchers apply two different strategies when
they plan the study:
• A research design oriented strategy: Cover as many users and
user groups in the chosen countries/regions as thoroughly as the
budget allows
• A use oriented strategy: Provide the employees with insights about
the important differences and similarities -
• Between countries/regions
• Between the employees and the users
• And between the many different types of users

8. INTERNATIONAL DATA
COLLECTION

9. International data collection
Planning and logistics is often time consuming and
complex, due to:
• Field studies and travel planning
• One or more user researchers typically go to the field
themselves
• Sometimes other employees accompany them
• Involvement of external resources
• Recruiters, agencies, translators, resource persons etc.
from the countries/regions where the study takes place
• Danes with a relevant ethnic or educational background
• Many users

10. The importance of going to the field
User researchers consider it very important to go to the field and
participate in the data collection, for two reasons:
• To gain rich insights
• Contextual knowledge, first-hand experience, direct interaction
with each of the users
• Also important for other employees to go to the field
• To ensure the quality of the data
• Consistent data collection across countries
• Data collection is carried out in the way and with the quality
they want
• Especially important if the data collection takes place in “new”
or less familiar countries

11. External resources: A matter of trust
and control
Choosing external resources is a big decision
Have to be able trust that the external resources can perform and
deliver the results of the study with the desired quality
This means that user researchers:
• Prefer to use resources they have used before with good results
• And that they brief external resourcing very thoroughly:
• Detailed criteria for recruiting relevant users
• An interview guide with detailed explanations of why and how
to ask each question
• Detailed guidelines for how to transcribe the interviews

12. Many users
– recruitment is a big task
International user studies typically involve many users –
and recruitment of users takes up much time in the initial
phases
The prevailing approach:
• The same number of users in each country/region that is
included in the study
• Users should be recruited based on the same criteria
(e.g., from a segmentation survey or existing personas)
“…of course, identical in the four countries” (Interviewee C)

13. Concerns about national culture create
barriers for data collection
• Many concerns about:
• Lack of education in culture
• Insufficient understandings of particular countries and
national cultures
• There seems to be much respect for national differences
• User studies are much less likely to be conducted in
countries/regions that are perceived as unfamiliar and
culturally different
• Even when these countries/regions are or could be very
relevant for business

14. PERCEPTIONS OF
INTERNATIONAL USERS

15. Many similarities across nationalities – as
well as important differences
• There are many similarities among end users,
despite their different nationalities – as humans,
consumers of particular products, parents, workers,
etc.
• The important differences are typically due to
market conditions rather than national culture:
• The socio-economic situation, legislation,
education, societal structures, etc.

16. Perceived differences in national
culture
However, perceived differences in national culture also
play a role, and is used to:
Support behavior
• An understanding of differences with regard to management control
and employee autonomy might be modeled directly into software
that supports organizational workflow
Explain behavior
• Challenges when communicating with people from other countries
(i.e. data collection) might be explained with different norms and
expectations regarding efficiency and/or politeness

17. “Us” vs “them”
• Examples of descriptions of user groups: “the white
middle class”, “the western world”, “engineering types”,
“a blonde hairdresser”
• Linguistic images are very powerful in communicating a
point, because positive and negative stereotypes are
used to create a vivid image
• However, the use of general, value-laden categories
gloss over complex understandings and create distance
rather than empathy and identification

18. INTERNATIONAL PERSONAS

19. Two main strategies for creating
international personas
There are two main strategies for presenting insights
about international user as a set of personas:
(1) Creating personas according to nationality
• When this strategy is used there is typically one persona
per country/region included in the study
(2) Creating personas according to other criteria
• Such as differences in user preferences, profession,
education, IT competences, autonomy at the workplace,
etc.

20. The choice of main strategy not only
based on data
The choice of main strategy for creating international
personas is not only based on data, but also on:
• Preferences/opinions, e.g. what works best and what it
takes for employees around the world to relate to the
personas
• Political considerations
• “Market thinking”, e.g, “We want to develop the Swedish
and the Norwegian markets”

21. Compensating for the choice of strategy
Some compensate for what the main strategy leaves
out by adding text fields that delineate:
(1) What would be different about the persona compared to the
country specific description if s/he was living in different
countries/regions
(2) What would be unique to the persona compared to the general
persona description if s/he was living in a particular country/region

22. Two strategies for creating the content of the
persona descriptions
Strategy 1: To tone down cultural
differences and geographic
references
• Focus: The persona as a person
rather than a person in a specific
place
• Argument: Employees around the
world should be able to recognize
and use the personas
• Content elements: pictures and
drawings with little/no background,
place names are avoided, general
names are used
Strategy 2: To show diversity
and challenge stereotypes
• Focus: the persona as a person
who has both expected and
unexpected features
• Argument: To communicate the
diversity of the users to the
employees
• Content elements: Somewhat
unexpected pictures that show the
personas in context, locations and
names from around the world, etc

23. SUMMARY

24. Summary of the empirical findings
• International user studies tend to be large-scale studies that involve
many users in a few strategic markets
• The preferred data collection method is field studies
• The user studies show that:
• There are many similarities among users across nationalities
• It often is more important to take differences in market conditions
into account than national culture per se
• So far, no best practice for incorporating both national cultural
differences and cross-cultural similarities into persona descriptions,
segmentations, etc. has been found

25. Findings: Dilemmas and discourses
Strategic, economic and
pragmatic
considerations
Countries, culture and
validity considerations
Knowledge about
strategic markets
The important
differences and
similarities
Business logic Research logic

26. Why an empirical maturity model?
Why did we decide to make a maturity model - and not
some other type of tool?
• To facilitate reflection and discussion of practice
• To ”capture” the empirical findings and the two types of
logic
Why do we call it an empirical maturity model?
• Primarily based on the empirical findings
• Inspired by literature about culture, intercultural
competence, UX maturity – and how maturity models are
generally outlined

27. Empirical maturity model – outline and
content
The model summarizes the empirical findings in two dimensions
and at different levels of maturity
The two dimensions -The organization’s general attitude and
approach to:
• International markets: Which markets the organization enters, how other
countries/cultures are perceived, and where data is collected
• User studies: The status (not, conducted, incorporated), funding, and method
Each dimension is considered separately, according to five levels of
maturity, going from 1 to 5

28. Empirical maturity model - use
The model can be used to reflect on and discuss:
• At which level of maturity an organization can be placed
for each of the two dimensions
• How the organization might become more mature in its’
approach to international markets and user studies in the
future