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Tangible futures: Combining scenario thinking and personas - A pilot study on urban mobility

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Puchinger, Jakob 
Millonig, Alexandra 
Nicolaï, Isabelle 

Abstract

Scenario planning methods tend to work at an aggregate level and to consider homogeneous populations, thus levelling the variable effects of future developments on different social groups. Decision-making based on such scenarios bears the risk of missing undesired impacts on specific groups of people, which may cause social tensions or require costly countermeasures. New approaches are needed to provide a better basis for socially responsible planning by making clearer the complex social impacts of future scenarios. In marketing and user-centered design, persona models are developed to represent typologies of users to cover a broad range of needs and requirements. We propose a systematic method, called the Scenario Personarrative method, for combining scenario thinking and personas into a structured but nonetheless flexible process, which allows generating fine-grained individualized narratives. We describe a pilot application in a case study on urban mobility. This pilot used existing scenarios and focused on a two-hour workshop where twelve experts created personas and the associated narratives across three scenarios of urban mobility in 2030. This pilot shows the applicability of the method for making potential effects on different social groups more tangible. We propose ways forward for further evaluation of the proposed methodology.

Description

Keywords

46 Information and Computing Sciences, 4608 Human-Centred Computing, 33 Built Environment and Design, 3304 Urban and Regional Planning, Generic health relevance

Journal Title

Futures

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0016-3287

Volume Title

117

Publisher

Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
This research work was carried out as part of the Anthropolis research project at the Technological Research Institute SystemX, and was supported with public funding within the scope of the French Program “Investissements d’Avenir”. Guillaume Lamé is supported by the Health Foundation’s grant to the University of Cambridge for The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute.