Going Global with Personas

The persona method is widely used and commonly described both in scientific literature and in case-based blogs. Most often the descriptions point to a local context with local user groups and it is difficult to find writings on use of the method in an international context and in globally distributed teams. This paper reports from a qualitative study conducted in 2012/13 within 13 Danish companies and points to how design teams apply several different strategies when end-users are distributed worldwide. Moreover it shows how the designers value the strength of the method to provide common grounds for the team, especially for team distributed across countries.