Personas

Personas are a very useful tool that are often used in user-centred design. A persona is a fictional character that represents a user type for a product, technology, or user interface

The DigiTOP project partners have modelled eight personas for various users of digital manufacturing technology. Personas are useful when considering the goals, tasks, and user experience factors of technology users.

The DigiTOP Personas for Digital Manufacturing Personnel have been developed by the academic partners of DigiTOP in collaboration with the industrial partners of the project. They are realistic depictions of personnel working in a digital manufacturing environment and are examples of people with different roles and tasks in this industry.

They can help decision makers and system integrators to design new products with the user in mind. Personas can also be used as part of a user-centred design process for designing specific aspects of a software or hardware for a new user interface.

The personas have been developed with the three main DigiTOP application scenarios in mind: Variable assembly, maintenance of manufacturing lines, and supervision of production lines. Each persona contains a personal background of the described character and describes the role, tasks, and challenges in their daily work routine. The personas also show examples for the research and innovation conducted in DigiTOP to investigate the human factors related to the persona’s use of digital manufacturing technology.

The DigiTOP project partners use the personas internally for developing the DigiTOP application scenarios, demonstrators, and research questions. In general, the personas are useful for users and builders of digital manufacturing solutions, which includes managers who want to consider the well-being of their employees and system integrators who look to design interfaces with a good usability.

The personas are made available for free as part of the DigiTOP Digital Toolkit. 

If you plan to use the personas in a scientific publication, you are kindly requested to refer to the DigiTOP project and to this website.