Designing for Personas That Don’t Have a Voice

Isabella G Bain, Martin Tomitsch

Session: Nature and the Home - Thursday 2022-12-01 13:30-15:00 AEDT
Late Breaking Work and Case Studies Track
In-Person Presentation

Abstract

This case study paper situates insights from designing a mobile application within academic literature advocating for the consideration of non-human stakeholders in the design process. The application, FrogID, was developed as part of a citizen science project to support frog conservation in Australia. FrogID crowdsources the collection of frog calls to build up a national database, which in turn can inform conservation strategies. The paper discusses the use of personas and other design tools to ensure the design solution considers the perspectives of frogs as a non-human stakeholder group and to facilitate interdisciplinary team collaboration. As a broader contribution to the field of interaction design, the paper discusses the responsibility of designers to advocate on behalf of stakeholders that don't have a voice.