Persona Theory

1
An explicit model for tailor-made
eCommerce web-based presentations Susanne
Loeber, Lora Aroyo Lynda Hardman
A setting-driven, rhetorical role-playing
approach to user modeling for automatically
generating ( eCommerce-oriented ) web
presentations.
Persona Theory
Situated Action framework
From theory to system
Conclusions
Future work
2
Persona Theory

• Premise people communicate/interact through
  roles they find appropriate within the setting.
• Rhetorical role the means by which the implied
  author and implied reader communicate (style
  sheets or personas) -the role of the implied
  author host, designer, expert, provider, etc.
  -the role of the implied reader user, learner,
  consumer, partner, etc.
• Personas help visitors to predict the purpose,
  content of the presentation and how to
  behave/interact.

3
Situated Action Framework

• Premise people communicate/interact through
  roles they find appropriate within the setting.
• A setting contains an activity (interaction)
  between a sender and one or more receivers,
  based on a need, goal (and plan),mediated by
  artifacts (tools, language, etc.).
• Personas help to visualize the setting through
  discourse, layout and selection of content.

4
From theory to system

• Three items necessary to bridge the gap between
  the characteristics of the setting and the
  requirements to generate a presentation
• the purpose of the presentation
• to inform or
• to persuade or
• to entertain
• the way of visualizing the presentation
• utilitarian or
• hedonic
• the creation of the target audience
• implied reader and
• implied author

5
Conclusions

• Power and advantages
• the Optimization Layer guides the generation of
  the optimized presentation,
• users who play the role of the implied reader
  find information more easily.
• Disadvantages
• processes within the Optimization Layer might
  conflict,
• the presentation will only be optimal for users
  who are part of the target audience.

6
Future research

• To describe the rules of the Optimization Layer.
• To describe the ways the Optimization Layer
  communicates with the Knowledge Server and the
  Generation Process.
• To focus on implementing Persona theory and
  Situated Action framework inside the Knowledge
  Server