Collaboration personas: A new approach to designing workplace collaboration tools

Abstract

The success of social computing has generated a host of workplace collaboration tools. However, adoption of these tools by entire groups is a major problem. One reason for the adoption problem is a lack of methods for considering collaborative groups in technology design. Even when designing collaboration tools, designers often employ methods that focus on individuals. This leads to tools that are not well targeted at the groups who will use them. To solve this problem, we propose the notion of collaboration personas, which are empirically derived descriptions of hypothetical groups, including details that inform the design of collaboration tools. Collaboration personas differ from individual personas in having (1) multiple, inter-related individuals playing specific roles; (2) a focus on collective goals and elaboration of individual goals that affect the collective goal; and (3) new attributes that characterize collaborative aspects of the group's work. We contrast collaboration personas with other design approaches and provide examples of how they can be used to design new collaborative tools that better meet the needs of typical groups. Copyright 2011 ACM.