Develop personas for the goal of story driven or domain driven design, by using personas as a tool to derive aspects about the user by seeing the world through their eyes.
The goals of both story driven and domain driven design are mostly the same; they are both methods to place yourself, the designer, in the context of the prospective user to the highest degree possible.
By placing yourself in the context of the user, you position yourself as a more effective user advocate; you are able to answer questions on behalf of the user more readily when you are able to place yourself within the same world view as the user.
The penultimate goal is to develop and empathic worldview of your users.
In acting as a more effective advocate for the user, you are also able to answer design questions for the user and arrive at conclusions that are much more focused toward the benefit of the user, or what the user would want or understand best.
Getting in the user demographic heads' to understand how to design interfaces that are intuitive to them and experiences that are motivating to them.
Method acting's parallel in application design (usability and user experience) design is :
In the case of application design, the story can be considered to be the theme, the characters are the personas.
One close parallel is found in acting. The term "method acting" is used to encompass a method, or process, actors may use to get into a particular role. The method is centered on placing yourself in the context of the character you are going to portray. The idea, once again, is that the actor is able to intimately understand the character's world view, and therefore may extrapolate out and determine aspects such as :
Personas are pieces of documentation that detail aspects of the characters in your story. Personas are usually derived from the statement of intent for a project; for example, what demographic is the application aimed at?
Some portions of a persona may be based upon concrete data : for example, how many female users between the ages of 20 and 30 use iPhones. Some information may be conjecture and part of the character building process : for example, a user enjoys playing boards games and particularly likes Monopoly since that was her family's favorite game to play over the holidays when she was growing up.
The following persona is derived for an application that is targeted at individuals who are looking to lose weight as part of a push at the beginning of the new year (new year's resolution). The target group will be mainly singles who are interested in improving their appearance for the purpose of dating.
How do we motivate to change behavior for these individuals?
Persona document
Empathy map document
Some issues require both a focused and narrow understanding. Two such problems, climate change and vaccination, require individual action to create positive impacts on a global scale. The problem is: individuals must be motivated to take action to effect change, change that may or may not be noticeable to the individual. Without this feedback loop, and therefore a reward for their efforts, the normal cycle of feedback to reward is not easily establishable as a motivational mechanism.
The ask is this: for either of these particular problems, devise a digital intervention which establishes a direct action/reward cycle. The change could be accomplished in several ways and does not have to be an immediate reward, i.e., monetary compensation or something of value. For example, if the individual understands the problem on a global scale, perhaps their contribution, or need for individual action, will be understandable and therefore satisfying and motivating. Another course of action may be to help the individual rationalize and see the true scope of the problem and how their action or inaction can multiply and have a discernible effect on a global scale.
In both issues, help individuals see and understand the scope of the problem, as well as how their actions can have a dramatic effect when amplified on a global scale. Turn this understanding into a motivating factor to change the individual's behavior toward a positive impact on a global scale.