Using Correspondence Analysis to monitor the persona
segmentation process
Lieve Laporte Karin Slegers
K.U.Leuven – CUO – IBBT K.U.Leuven – CUO – IBBT
Parkstraat 45 / 3605 Parkstraat 45 / 3605
3000 Leuven, Belgium 3000 Leuven, Belgium
lieve.laporte@soc.kuleuven.be karin.slegers@soc.kuleuven.be
ABSTRACT
Persona segmentation is the first phase of the persona
method. It can be defined as the process of creating
representative groups of similar users. Since the origin of
the persona technique, both qualitative and quantitative
methods have been used to create persona segments. While
the qualitative approach has been criticized because of its
lack of accuracy in creating persona segments, application
of quantitative methods seems to be suffering from the
same problem, due to inconsiderate application of statistical
techniques. In this paper, we present Correspondence
Analysis, an exploratory data technique, as an alternative
quantitative persona segmentation method. We demonstrate
that this method is appropriate to create useful persona
profiles, and, additionally, it can aid in carefully monitoring
the segmentation process.
Author Keywords
Personas; persona segmentation; correspondence analysis.
ACM Classification Keywords
H.5.2. Information interfaces and presentation: User
Interface: Theory and Methods.
INTRODUCTION
As part of his goal-directed design methodology, Cooper
developed the persona-technique [9]. The notion persona
refers to the description of a hypothetical, archetypical user
[3]. It is a fictional character, made up of a demographic
profile, ‘psychographics’ such as goals, attitudes and
behaviors, and a set of needs in relation to the technological
design at hand. These characteristics are generally based
upon real user data, to make the persona a representation of
a unique group of people who share common goals,
attitudes and behaviours. Personas focus attention on
aspects of technology design and use that other methods do
not [26], and, like that, they can guide designers and
developers during product development.
Two separate phases in the persona creation process are
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265
Dirk De Grooff
K.U.Leuven – CUO – IBBT
Parkstraat 45 / 3605
3000 Leuven, Belgium
dirk.degrooff@soc.kuleuven.be
always included: making persona segmentations (i.e.
creating groups of similar users), and writing the persona
narratives (i.e. writing a detailed description of the
persona’s behaviours, attitudes, and personal data).
Qualitative and/or quantitative methods can be applied to
the implementation of both phases. Traditionally, and
according to Cooper’s goal-directed design method [9],
personas are created based on rich, qualitative data coming
from interviews and observations. Recently, however, this
approach has been criticized because of its lack of rigor:
developing personas based on a set of interviews with a
(very) limited number of users can hardly represent the
breadth of real users [25], with the ultimate risk of
diminishing the people that should be at the centre of the
design process [11]. As a reaction to this criticism, a trend
towards the use of quantitative data in combination with
statistical techniques to create persona segmentations is
now observable. Several multivariate techniques, such as
factor analysis and cluster analysis have been applied to the
domain of persona segmentation (e.g. [22][4]). This
approach, however, has equally been subject to criticism,
mainly related to the use of surveys to gather quantitative
user data, and to the overconfident use of statistical
techniques to analyze these data [28].
Consensus has clearly not been reached yet about this
matter. This paper introduces an exploratory data technique,
Correspondence Analysis (CA), as an alternative
quantitative method to create persona segmentations. In the
context of a case study, we will demonstrate and illustrate
the appropriateness of such a quantitative approach to
analyze representative sets of rich categorical data and thus
create useful persona segmentations. In addition, we will
show that CA has a set of properties that makes it especially
useful to closely monitor the segmentation process, and,
like that, allows avoiding overconfident or thoughtless use
of statistical techniques.
In this paper, we will explicitly focus on the segmentation
process; the second phase, interpreting the segments and
writing the persona narratives, will not be considered. In the
next section of this paper, we will present an overview of
traditional persona creation methods. Next, we will describe
CA as a multivariate, exploratory statistical technique, and
demonstrate its use in a case study creating persona
segmentations for the design of an intelligent adaptive
learning system for children with reading comprehension
difficulties. The paper concludes with a qualitative analysis
of the technique.
PERSONA CREATION METHODS
Qualitative personas
Originally, purely qualitative methods were applied during
the entire process of creating personas: making the
segmentations as well as writing the narrative part of the
persona. A typical and recommended approach within
qualitative persona creation would be to conduct one-to-one
interviews, or ethnographic user studies, combining
interviews with observation. After data collection,
qualitative analysis techniques are applied to make
segmentations in the data. As a general procedure, the most
important behavioral variables or themes, according to the
project objectives, are determined [27]. Next, each
interviewee is mapped against the appropriate set of
variables. In that way, a segmentation of the data into
separate groupings based on these behavioural patterns is
created, each presenting a different persona profile. This
segmentation process is mostly done with the use of manual
techniques, such as affinity diagrams, card sorting exercises
and expert panels (e.g. [5] [21]). Besides these commonly
used and typical methods, a few very specific methods have
been suggested: Miaskiewicz uses Latent Semantic
Analysis, a qualitative semi-automatic method for
extracting and representing the contextual-usage meaning
of words in a large corpus of text to make persona clusters
[24]. Faily & Fléchais make use of a qualitative data
analysis technique based on Grounded Theory to create
personas whose characteristics are, according to the
authors, both grounded in and traceable to their originating
source of empirical data [14]. Usually, the persona
segmentations created with these qualitative methods are
considered as the end result. But if enough time and
resources are available, the segmentations can be viewed as
hypotheses, and a quantitative method, such as a statistical
analysis based on survey data, can be used to validate them.
In each case, after the segmentation process, the persona
description is assembled around the segments. For each of
these, details based on the data are added, and personas are
described in narrative form [15][1].
Quantitative personas
Data collection in a quantitative research design is usually
done with user surveys, site traffic analysis or CRM data
analysis [25]; data analysis typically makes use of statistics
to make segmentations. Several statistical techniques to
segment persona data have been studied. In an empirical
study using data from an online survey and server queries
of system usage [4], Brickey compared three multivariate
methods – Factor Analysis (FA), Principal Component
Analysis (PCA) and Multivariate Cluster Analysis (MVCA)
– and a manual persona clustering technique. Degree of
agreement between each of the methods and the manual
clustering method was found moderate for FA/PCA and
poor for MVCA [4]. Greaney et al. used PCA to uncover
266
patterns of responses from a mobile user questionnaire,
leading to personas that would, according to the authors,
certainly not have emerged from manually sifting through
the data [16].
Persona segmentations that have been created based on
quantitative data and with the use of quantitative (often
statistical and automatic) techniques often lack some ‘body’
and they are therefore often enriched with the use of
additional qualitative data. Khalayi et al., for example,
describe a framework to create personas based on a pool of
quantitative data coming from market research and a
customer data warehouse, at first, and then supplement and
enrich them with additional qualitative data according to the
product concept at hand [20]. In another study, Tu et al.
used a 45 dimensions survey as the basis for Multivariate
Cluster Analysis [32]. Using MVCA to segment and profile
the data and qualitative methods to enrich the persona
profiles, they found that resulting personas were more
representative and less ambiguous. Similarly, Sinha made
use of PCA to identify underlying factors in the results of a
survey questioning 32 dimensions of the restaurant
experience. Results of the data analysis were given to two
information architects, who used the factor loadings as the
core of the personas. Other information helped them to
flesh out the demographic characteristics of the personas. In
addition, they felt the need to do more user research, such
as interviews, to finish the creation of the personas [29].
According to the author, the proposed technique enhances
the accuracy of the persona creation, while working in a
complementary way with other qualitative methods.
McGinn et al. created a survey based on stakeholder input,
containing 18 questions that gathered both demographic
and behavioral data. They conducted exploratory FA to
extract a set of factor-driven groups, and resulting personas.
Afterwards, people from each of the groups were
interviewed in order to collect information that could not
easily be analyzed by statistical methods (i.e. questions
concerning people’s motivations, attitudes, goals etc.).
Besides adding this type of ‘richer’ data to the factor groups
(and personas), these interviews came out to be a useful
validation technique for the survey design [22].
Criticism
Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been subject
to a range of criticisms in persona literature. To start with,
the validity of the persona method in itself has not been
researched extensively [7]. Faily describes the persona
concept as a paradox: “A behavioural specification of sorts,
their most endearing characteristic is that they do not look
like specifications: they have names, jobs, feelings, and
goals they want to fulfill, sometimes irrespective of the
purpose a system was designed for” [14].
Opponents of the explicit focus on qualitative data claim
that personas are often created based on insights on a few
users at the expense of a broader understanding of users
through the use of quantitative data (e.g. [29]). Moreover,
as the amount of (textual) data coming from interviews
grows, it becomes difficult for human experts to make
objective judgments and trace their findings back to user
data [27]. Different creators might end up making totally
different and too subjective personas [32]. Another
criticism on the qualitative approach states that existing
assumptions about users don’t tend to be questioned during
the qualitative analysis process: “people find what they are
looking for” [25]. Finally, interviews are often judged as an
inefficient and time-consuming way of finding
representative users [30].
Criticism on quantitative methods is often related to the fact
that most of them originally come from market research.
Although marketing and user experience research
effectively have shared interests (e.g. understanding the
psychology of the user/purchaser in order to deliver a
valued user experience), important differences in practice
traditions remain. In particular, market research places
much greater emphasis on surveys and tends to have more
confidence in the idea that self-report predicts behavior
[28]. Siegel describes a case study in which the profiles of 8
clusters of respondents based on survey data were used as
initial personas [28]. New participants were then recruited
based on a screening tool that was developed using a
slightly adapted version of the original classification tool.
When gathering additional rich qualitative data from these
new users to support the persona development for each
segment, it was found that people could easily be grouped
into 2-4 subgroups within each segment, and many of these
subgroups together across segments produced more
coherent groups than grouping them by their assigned
segments. Based on these results, the author warns against
accepting statistical segmentations of survey data as ‘the
truth’ instead of viewing them as preliminary hypotheses to
be tested with behavioural research. The essence of his
criticism is that, when doing quantitative research, basic
properties of statistical methods (e.g. the differences
between treatment of statistical groupings and individual
measurements) and principles such as the need to evaluate
reliability and the need for external validation need to be
respected [28]; otherwise segmentations will not reflect the
reality of the users. Other criticisms relate to the design and
use of marketing surveys to create persona segmentations,
placing a lot of emphasis on demographic variables to form
clusters, with questions focusing on the like/dislike of a
product concept instead of the specifics of the interaction of
the user with the product [30].
From the criticisms on the qualitative approach to persona
segmentation, it becomes clear that persona creation could
benefit from a more objective approach, based on a
representative, sufficiently large sample of users.
Quantitative methods are needed to accomplish this goal.
The criticisms on the quantitative methods, however, show
that, at least so far, these segmentation methods have not
been applied in a well-considered way. Indeed, all studies
described here [4, 16, 20, 22, 29, 32] use multivariate
267
techniques on survey data to create persona segmentations,
without monitoring the statistical analyzing process. Both
survey and statistics seem to be treated as a black box,
putting in data, and taking the output for granted. Hardly
any analysis of the segmentation process is done, and the
result is taken ‘as is’. Nevertheless, whether using
qualitative or quantitative methods to create personas,
segmentation is the critical starting point of the persona
creation process. If the core way the users are defined is not
clear, useful and correct, the personas will not be either.
And if design decisions are based on these wrong segments
or user representations, the product to be developed might
end up for the wrong people. Enough attention should
therefore be given to the accurateness and validity of
persona segmentation.
This paper argues that Correspondence Analysis (CA), an
exploratory data technique to analyze categorical data, can
offer added value to persona segmentation. It will be
demonstrated as a useful method to make hypothetical user
profiles by identifying patterns and critical attributes in the
user data. Moreover, we will show that CA has several
properties that will aid in carefully monitoring and
validating the process of creating persona segmentations.
CORRESPONDENCE ANALYSIS
CA is an exploratory data technique, which means that it
explores data for which no specific hypotheses have been
formed [10]. Its main goal is to reveal structure and patterns
in a complex data matrix, by replacing the raw data with a
more simple data matrix without losing any essential
information [8]. More specifically, CA analyzes two-way
tables containing some measure of correspondence between
the rows and columns (e.g. frequency counts) [23]. In
addition, CA makes it possible to represent the relationship
between the variables and categories of variables visually,
as points within a (typically two-dimensional) space, which
makes interpretation easier [8]. For example, categories that
are similar to each other appear close to each other in the
plots, and row and column points are shown in the same
graphical display. In this way, it is easy to see which
categories of a variable are similar to each other or which
categories of different variables are associated to each other
[23]. In other words, CA tries to explain the most variance
in the model with the least number of dimensions
(dimensions in the context of CA are somewhat comparable
to principal components in principal component analysis).
CA has been a popular method in some areas of the social
sciences, such as marketing, ecology and sociology, where
it is used to transform complex data tables into
straightforward graphical displays of data patterns [18]. To
the best of our knowledge, it has not been used in HCI
research yet, although it has been suggested as a suitable
method to analyze patterns of player behavior for the
creation of play-personas [6]. Similarly, we argue that CA
can be suitably applied to create persona segmentations.
First, CA can transform a large set of complex data into a
simpler display of variables, while at the same time research materials for the second study. One of the main
preserving all of the valuable information in the data set. objectives of the second field study was to create child-
This is also the case with other multivariate techniques such personas, to be used throughout the entire design process in
as factor analysis, principal component analysis and cluster the project.
analysis, which have been used to make persona
Data collection
segmentations. But while these other techniques assume The study was conducted in two British schools, both of
their input data to be at least at the ordinal level, CA has
which have a deaf children’s unit and a mainstream unit. A
very flexible data requirements [18]. For example, when a
total of 114 children from four classes (one per year) of
Likert scale is used to collect data, the spaces between
each unit were visited in their classroom. Several
descriptors (i.e. ‘almost never’, ‘sometimes’, and ‘often’) assignments were done with all children in all classes.
are not necessarily equivalent (i.e. the distance between Table 1 presents an overview of participating (hearing and
‘almost never’ and ‘sometimes’ is not necessarily the same deaf) children, per age and gender.
as the distance between ‘sometimes’ and often’). In this
type of data sets, CA is a useful technique because it Class Hearing/deaf Nb of boys Nb of girls Total
focuses mainly on how the variables correspond to one Year 3 Hearing 25 16 41
Deaf 6 7 13
another and not whether there is a significant difference Year 4 Hearing 22 21 43
between these variables [13]. And indeed, categorical data Deaf 7 4 11
are often easier and less time consuming to collect in HCI Year 5 Hearing 15 29 44
research. For example, it is less complex to ask children Deaf 7 5 12
whom they like to play computer games with compared to Year 6 Hearing 25 24 49
asking them to describe the degree to which they like to Deaf 5 8 13
play games with a particular person. In addition, no Table 1. Children participating to assignments.
distributional assumptions are necessary, unlike classical The purpose of the study was to collect data on children’s
techniques involving inference to population parameters. attitudes, behaviour and goals towards their technology use
The only assumption required of the data is that the values (i.e. computer, games) and towards reading. To address
not be negative [8]. Third, CA demonstrates how variables these domain-specific questions, and taking into account
are associated, and not simply that they are associated (as is our methodological requirements, namely the collection of
the case in cluster analysis) [10] or that they explain a categorical data from a relatively large sample of children, a
certain amount of variance in the data set (as factor analysis number of specific paper assignments were presented to
and principal component analysis do) [13]. That way, each child in the classroom. These assignments were
relationships that cannot be identified using other centered on the following themes: mobile phone use,
multivariate techniques can be revealed. computer use, TV use, leisure activities, school activities,
Since CA typically analyzes the associations between two games, reading, homework, and interaction with parents.
variables, an extension of the technique, Multiple About each theme, the assignments included a number of
Correspondence Analysis (MCA), will be needed here to simple open-ended questions, referring to the context of use
analyze the associations between more than two variables. of the device or activity at hand. Examples of questions
MCA is a simple CA carried out on a matrix with cases as related to the use of a computer were: why do you use a
rows and categories of variables as columns [10]. As in CA, computer – with whom do you use a computer – what do
the analysis will be most successful when the variables you use the computer for, etc. Assignments were designed
partition the cases into clusters with the same or similar in a child-friendly way, showing thought bubbles grouped
categories [23]. around a coloured picture of the device at hand (shown in
Figure 1) (according to the guidelines from [2]). The idea
CASE STUDY: CREATING CHILD-BASED PERSONAS was to ask the children survey-like questions, but in a
FOR AN ADAPTIVE READING COMPREHENSION TOOL playful way. A total of 9 assignments were presented to
CA was used for the creation of persona segmentations in each child. Each assignment took about 5 minutes to make,
the context of a project to design and develop an intelligent enabling us to complete all assignments within one class
adaptive learning system for hearing and deaf children with period. Besides the assignments, a few
reading comprehension difficulties. The system will consist demographic/psychographic characteristics from the
of smart games, asking children to draw inferences about children were recorded: age, gender, and whether a child
temporal events of stories [31]. During the user was deaf or hearing. The method described above allowed
requirements collection phase of this project, two field us to collect quantitative data from a reasonable number of
studies were conducted. The objective of the first field participants, while at the same time creating a feel for the
study was to get a general idea of the target group. targeted user group by observing the children in the
Therefore, children were observed when performing their classroom and talking with them and their teachers while
tasks in the classroom, and their teachers were interviewed they were doing the assignments.
about their pupils. The information gathered during this
first field study was used as an input for drawing up the

268

Figure 1. Example of an assignment: children were asked 6
open-ended questions about their computer use.
Data analysis
Before starting the data analysis, the raw data coming from
the assignments were prepared in order to meet the input
requirements for a MCA. The assignment questions were
open-ended, and the answers were in a short, textual format.
All these answers were put into categories (similar answers
were placed into the same category), resulting in the data
set structure described in Table 2. The SPSS input data file
consisted of 114 rows, one for each case (representing one
child’s data on all assignments), and with 20 columns
representing the variables. Each cell in the data matrix thus
contained the category score for a particular variable.
In the next sections, the entire procedure to arrive at the
persona segmentation is described. This segmentation is
based on a 3-dimensional solution of a MCA; the essential
elements of this solution are presented, both in the text and
in a set of plots. For reasons of clarity and conciseness,
however, (a) only a subset of variables (presented in Table
2) was included in the analysis; (b) only two-dimensional
plots are visually presented; (c) and the procedure is
demonstrated with a few example variables from the data
set instead of presenting separate results for each variable.
Model summary
Table 3 shows the summary of our MCA solution, with
three dimensions explaining the model. Almost 75% of the
variance in the data is accounted for by this solution. Each
dimension in the table is listed according to the amount of
variance explained in the model. Dimension 1 explains the
most variance in the model (31%), followed by dimension 2
(25%) and 3 (18%). The internal consistency of the three
dimensions was very good with Cronbach's Alpha
coefficients (a measure of reliability) of .884, .843 and .765
for dimensions 1 to 3 respectively. We chose a three-
dimensional solution, because the amount of additional
variance accounted for by adding a fourth dimension to the
model was negligible, and lower-dimensional solutions are
easier to interpret (see further).
Variable: categories
BooksWith: alone, aloneParents, parents, brotherSister, friends, many
BooksWhere: livingroom, bedroom, other
BooksWhy: bored, fun, haveTo, learning, other
BooksWhen: morning, afternoon, evening, weekend
BooksHowOften: everyday, sometimes, rarely
PhoneWhat: calling, texting, callingTexting, games, everything
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PhoneWhere: home, out
PhoneWhy: contact, emergency, fun, other
PhoneHowOften: often, notOften
TvWith: alone, aloneBrotherSister, aloneParents, parents, brotherSister,
many
TvWhere: livingroom, bedroom, other
TvWhy: fun, bored, interesting, other
TvWhen: morning, afternoon, evening, weekend
TvHowOften: everyday, sometimes, allTheTime
ComputerWhat: games, internet, communication, info, everything
ComputerWhere: bedroom, livingroom, other
ComputerWhen: morning, afternoon, evening, weekend
ComputerWhy: bored, fun, info, communication, other
ComputerHowOften: everyday, sometimes, rarely, allTheTime
ComputerWith: alone, aloneParents, parents, brotherSister, many
Table 2. Variables in the dataset, with their category labels.
Every variable also included the category ‘NA’, meaning that
the device/attribute at hand was not used.
Cronbach's Variance Accounted For
Dimension
Alpha Inertia % of Variance
1 ,884 ,312 31,203
2 ,843 ,251 25,148
3 ,765 ,183 18,272
Total ,746
Table 3. Model summary.
Object scores
Figure 2 presents the scores of each case (according to the
terminology of MCA, these are called objects here) on the
first two dimensions. Examining the plot, we can
distinguish 5 clusters of objects, indicated with different
colours (objects indicated in grey do not really seem to be
part of a cluster). The first dimension discriminates the
blue, red and orange cluster (on one end of the horizontal
axis) from the yellow and green cluster (on the other end of
the horizontal axis). It also separates the blue cluster from
all the others. The second dimension seems to separate the
red and yellow cluster from the orange and green cluster,
with the blue cluster going in between them. The blue
cluster lies much farther from the origin than the other
objects, suggesting that, taken as a whole, many of the
characteristics of these objects (or cases) are not shared by
the other objects, since the distance from an object to the
origin reflects variation from the average response pattern.
Taking into account the third dimension in our solution
reveals that the orange and green clusters (scoring
moderately low on the second dimension) both have
moderately negative (to neutral) scores on the third
dimension. The yellow cluster has very variable scores on
the third dimension, ranging from very low to very high;
the same goes for the blue cluster. Within the red cluster,
two subgroups can be distinguished, one of them scoring
very low on the third dimension, the other one scoring very
high. In the next section, discrimination measures of the
variables in the model will be discussed. Afterwards,
category quantifications (i.e. how the categories are spread
along the dimensions) are described. These measures will
then lead us to a detailed interpretation of the object clusters
and the dimensions.
 4.0
  dimension, resulting in a clear view of the spread of
categories in the dimensional space.
2.0
 

0.0  
-­‐4   -­‐3   -­‐2   -­‐1   0   1   2  
-­‐2.0  

-­‐4.0  

Figure 2. Object scores on dimensions 1 and 2.

Figure 3. Discrimination measures on dimensions 1 and 2.

Discrimination measures
For each variable, a discrimination measure is computed for
each dimension, with large discrimination measures
indicating a higher degree of discrimination between the Figure 4. Quantifications of categories.
categories of a variable along that dimension [10]. The plots
Figure 4 shows such a plot for two example variables,
in Figure 3 show that the first dimension is associated to the
booksWith and computerWhy. booksWith scores high on
variables relating to TV and book use (except for tvWhen
dimensions 1 and 2 (as described in the previous result
and booksWhen who do not seem to discriminate well in
section). Plot (a) presents the seven categories of
any dimension). The variables related to phone use have a
booksWith, six of which group together at the right of the
large value on the second dimension and a small value on
plot, with NA very far from this group. The large
the first dimension. The variables booksWith and tvWith
discrimination for this variable along dimension 1 is the
have large values on both dimensions, indicating a large
result of this latter category being very different from the
spread of categories along both dimensions. Taking into
other categories of booksWith. The group of six categories
account the third dimension (not shown in the figure) shows
is spread along the second dimension, with brotherSister
that variables related to computer use (except
located at the bottom of the plot, alone and aloneParents
computerWhen) discriminate well here. Regarding the
nearer to the top, and the remaining categories near the
interpretation of the dimensions, it can be seen that each
center of the graph (friends, many, parents). Similarly, the
dimension corresponds to the use of a particular
spread of the categories of variable computerWhy (b),
device/attribute.
which scores high on the third dimension, suggests that
Category quantifications cases with computer use because of informative reasons are
The discrimination plot in the previous result section rather different from cases using the computer because it is
contains the variances of the quantified variables along a fun, and very different from those who do not use a
particular dimension. However, the same variance could computer. These category coordinates were calculated for
correspond to all categories spread moderately far apart or each variable, resulting in a detailed insight into the spread
to most categories being close together, with a few of the categories of each variable.
categories differing from this group [10]. Since
Interpreting the object scores
discrimination plots cannot discriminate between these two
Taking into the account the information coming from
conditions, MCA also provides category quantification
discrimination measures and category quantifications, a
plots, displaying the coordinates of each category on each
greater insight into the object scores displayed in Figure 2
can now be gained. In Figure 5, these object scores are

270
displayed again, but this time they are labeled by their
category value for the variable booksWith. The plot shows
there is an almost perfect differentiation of the categories
noBooks and brothers&Sisters, demonstrating that
booksWith discriminates in the first and second dimensions
respectively. Similarly, categories alone and
aloneWithParents mainly have positive scores, while values
of category manyOthers are scattered throughout the plot.
The same procedure can be followed for each variable.
Mapping the entire set of variable category quantifications
onto the clusters of objects reveals a lot of information on
the distribution of categories over objects (cases).
Additionally, it can aid in interpreting dimensions. Indeed,
while the first dimension seems to be related to the
frequency of use of several mediums, the second dimension Figure 5. Object scores labeled by the category values of
provides information on the kind of contact users expect variable booksWith.
from these mediums, e.g. via a phone, or via live contact.
The third dimension, then, shows that the use of computer
crosses both other dimensions; its use is not associated to
the use of the other mediums. All this information brought
together enables a detailed analysis and interpretation of the
coloured clusters displayed in Figure 2, and thus, of initial
persona segmentations.
Towards persona segmentation hypotheses
Initial persona segmentations in our case study are thus
based on: (1) distribution of all variable categories over
object clusters, e.g. the blue cluster consists of objects with
category ‘noBooks’ on variable booksWith while the orange
cluster consists of objects with category ‘brothers&sisters’
on variable booksWith; (2) interpretation of discrimination
measures and, thus, dimensions.
Following this procedure led us to the following persona Figure 6. Quantifications of categories of supplementary
segmentations (described very generally here). To start variables (a) deaf/hearing and (b) age.
with, although the yellow cluster contains a variety of This is the initial segmentation, based on a first MCA
cases, a few characteristics seem to be unique to this analysis. In a next step, they can be further adjusted or
cluster. Many of these children read books and watch TV refined, making use of (1) adding supplementary variables
because they are feeling bored. They watch TV very to the model, and (2) omitting outliers from the model.
regularly (every day), and they do so alone or with their
parents. They use their mobile phone and their computer for (1) MCA allows adding supplementary variables to the
various reasons and purposes, and in different locations. model; this means that these variables have no influence on
The yellow cluster is the largest one. The red cluster, then, the solution, but it is possible to place them onto the model
is characterized by its lack of interest in books. These a posteriori. Examining object score plots labeled with
children use their phone mainly to have contact with others. supplementary, demo/psychographic variables age, gender,
They watch TV very frequently, and their parents are not and deaf/hearing to the model teaches us that the oldest
involved in these activities. They use a computer, often children mainly appear in the red cluster while the youngest
together with other people, and they use it to play games, children occur in the blue and orange clusters; deaf children
but also to communicate with others and to look for are in the blue and orange cluster, and hearing children
information. The orange and green clusters contain children mainly in the yellow and red clusters (Figure 6).
who read and watch TV because it is fun. They don’t do (2) MCA also allows for easy treatment of outliers in the
these activities by themselves but together with their model. The blue cluster at first sight seems to provide a
brothers and sisters. Their computer is used to play games, useful persona segment; indeed, it confirms the intuitive
and they do this by themselves. The blue cluster contains assumption that many deaf (especially very young) children
only children who do not make any use of mobile phone, do not make use of a mobile phone, do not read books or
TV and books. They do use a computer, however, mainly to watch TV. This could be valuable information to be taken
play games. into account during the design process. However, this group

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seems to be an outlier, characterized by a lot of unique
characteristics. Since the presence of such outliers might
influence the discrimination measures of the variables in the
model [23] it is possible to omit these objects from the
analysis. Applying this to our model revealed that
discrimination measures remained largely unchanged, so
there was no need to adjust our initial segmentation.
The persona segmentations were used as a starting point for
the second part of persona creation: writing the narratives.
This was done with the use of information from interviews
and observations conducted in both field studies. However,
since this is not the focus of our paper, we will not further
elaborate upon this process.
DISCUSSION
We will apply a qualitative analysis to describe how well
our method arrives at (a) producing useful and valid
persona segments, and how well it aids in (b) monitoring
the persona segmentation process.
(a) Creating useful segments
We will analyze the usefulness and validity of our
segmentation approach by applying a set of evaluation
criteria proposed by Mulder [25].
Do the segments explain key differences between the
users? – The discrimination measures of MCA clearly
show which variables are most discriminating within the
data set. Iteratively trying out a number of solutions with a
different number of dimensions or adding/omitting
particular variables from the model can reveal additional
discriminating variables. Depending on how well these
discriminating variables describe the resulting clusters, a
particular solution can be chosen.
Are the segments different enough from each other? –
Two points positioned close together in a low-dimensional
solution may lie far apart in a solution with higher
dimensionality [8]. Within a particular solution, a specific
number of clusters will organically emerge from the data. If
the segments in this solution are not different enough, the
number of dimensions can be enlarged in order to produce a
larger number of more differentiated clusters.
Do the segments feel like real people? – The possibility to
add supplementary variables to the MCA model enabled the
creation of more meaningful segments. Persona
segmentations are generally based on people’s attitudes,
goals and behaviors instead of demographic variables.
However, persona attitude, goal and behavior data is often
‘enriched’ (after the segmentation) with these
demo/psychographic characteristics, in order to give the
persona an identity or a ‘face’. As demonstrated in our case
study with the variables age, gender and deaf/hearing,
MCA allows for adding supplementary variables to the
model. Since these variables are not taken into account in
the analysis, they do not influence the solution (and they
shouldn’t), but putting them onto the model afterwards and
viewing the relationships between demographic variables
and attitudes/goals/behaviors can provide useful ways of
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‘identifying’ the clusters and giving them more meaning. In
addition, taking into account all variables included in the
analysis resulted in detailed segment description. Each
segment could be described as a multifaceted person with a
set of behaviours and attitudes. Moreover, the description of
our segments corresponded to information gathered in
interviews and observations.
Can the segments be described quickly? – Since MCA
identifies the variables with the highest discrimination
measures, it is possible to quickly describe each segment by
the factors that best define it.
Do the segments cover all users? – In our solution, the
majority of our users were described by the segmentation;
only a limited set of the data points were scattered
throughout the plot. In addition, MCA allows adding
supplementary data points to the model. This means that, in
the course of the design process, additional user data could
be placed onto the model. These data points could allow for
a more detailed interpretation of the results and further
refinement of segments.
(b) Monitoring the segmentation process
A number of properties specific to MCA make it possible to
closely follow-up on the statistical segmentation process.
(1) MCA demonstrates how variables are associated, and
not simply that they are associated. While other
multivariate techniques such as cluster analysis, all search
for patterns in a complex data set, MCS goes one step
further, by identifying relationships among cases, variables
and categories. This enables the researcher to gain more
insight into the data structure and closely follow-up the
segmentation process. By describing two examples of
pitfalls or lessons learned during our case study, we will
demonstrate that particular characteristics (e.g. errors) of
the research design can be easily revealed and evaluated by
making use of the specific properties of MCA during the
segmentation phase instead of validating the persona
segments afterwards. (1) The first example concerns an
aspect of reliability of the data collection method (the
children(s assignments) used in the case study, namely that
small differences in respondents’ answers might lead to
different categorizations: we used open-ended questions
and were thus obliged to categorize these answers to make
them suited for MCA. However, it is possible that different
respondents actually mean to give ‘the same answer’, but
name it differently, which could make it difficult to
categorize these answers. For example, to the question ‘how
often do you watch TV?’, someone might say ‘every day’,
and another person might say ‘all day’, while they actually
mean the same thing. A similar problem related to the
structure of the data set occurs when making use of the
response category ‘other’ or when making use of multiple
response categories. (2) The second example is related to
the validity of a method: do we accurately understand what
a method is measuring? The data might contain, for
example, a consistent bias, in the form of, as in our case
study, very young children who love to say that they make
very frequent use of all kinds of technology and games, and
they do this all the time. Such a response pattern will
wrongly add these children (cases) to a cluster or category
of very intensive technology users. This is a problem in
many data collection methods, since respondents often give
socially desirable answers. In both examples, MCA will
produce ‘strange’ results. Regarding the first example,
imagine a two-dimensional representation of a number of
categories with all these categories grouped in a neat
cluster, except one: the category ‘other’. In the second
example, it will become immediately clear from the data
patterns that the cluster of the youngest children are the
most intensive technology users, which is probably not a
correct representation of reality. The properties of MCA,
explicitly demonstrating the associations between variables,
objects and cases and visually displaying them in plots, thus
forces the researcher to obtain more insight into the set-up
of the research design and the structure of the data, and, if
necessary, make corrections to the analysis.
(2) The plots generated in a MCA allow you to look at
relationships in a dimensional space. Presenting the analysis
results visually also allows for an easy discovery of
remarkable patterns in the data. In our case study, for
example, the blue cluster was positioned very far from the
other data points. All the cases in this cluster appeared to
refer to children who make no use of TV, mobile phone and
books, but who do use a computer. Extreme cases might be
useful in persona creation to explore aspects of use that
might be overlooked by focusing on more realistic model
users [12], or because they are more memorable [16].
Moreover, when designing smart games to support reading
comprehension, the blue cluster provides valuable
information, and could thus be withheld as a useful persona
segment. Showing clusters of data points together with data
points scattered loosely throughout the dimensional space
also reminds the researcher that clusters are not –and are
not supposed to be- neat and tidy, but they rather represent
continuous differences between cases. The latter is also
accomplished by looking at the visual representation of a
cluster of object scores labeled with their category values
on a particular variable.
(3) The presence of outliers, such as the blue cluster
referred to in the previous paragraph, might influence the
discrimination measures of the variables in the model.
MCA allows for easy treatment of outliers, however. They
can be omitted from the model, which might make other
patterns in the data more prominent. This way, MCA is a
useful aid in generating several segmentations and selecting
the most useful model. The latter can also be accomplished
by adding versus omitting particular variables to/from the
model. Indeed, MCA allows for supplementary variables to
be placed onto the model a posteriori, without influencing
the solution. We used this feature to add
psycho/demographic characteristics as supplementary
variables, but the same procedure can be followed to test
the influence or discrimination value of other variables.
273
(4) Finally, MCA provides ways to evaluate the validity of
the results. If, for example, the dimensions can be
interpreted in a sensible manner, this indicates that they are
justified. If a dimension cannot be interpreted, this could
indicate that it is just a result of random fluctuations in the
data. Including supplementary data points in a MCA also
makes it possible to check the validity of the results.
Indeed, since these points do not influence the solution to
the active elements, they server as external criteria [8].
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper described the use of MCA to create persona
segmentations. With our case study, we demonstrated that
it is a powerful tool for data reduction that can capture the
underlying patterns in complex categorical data and thus
provide a useful set of initial persona profiles.
Statistical techniques can indeed be applied to the persona
creation process and can provide accurate, representative
results. However, they should not be used blindly, since
statistics software always produces results, regardless of the
quality of the input data. With our case study we showed
that MCA can help the researcher to obtain insight into the
quality of his data and research design. By its properties,
such as showing associations between variables, categories
and cases, and visually displaying these in a dimensional
space, it allows for an easier discovery of unexpected
patterns in the data or even flaws in the research design.
The analysis can thus be closely monitored and, if
necessary, adjusted in order to adequately explain
similarities or differences between user groups during the
segmentation process instead of merely trying to validate
the segments afterwards, with the use of qualitative data.
The latter, of course, does not mean that the qualitative
persona creation approach is redundant. Although Cooper’s
initial suggestion that it is better to be as precise as possible
than to be as accurate as possible in persona creation [9] is a
little outdated, everyone probably agrees that qualitative
research is crucial to the enrichment of persona profiles,
and to the validation of quantitative persona segmentations.
The focus of this paper was on persona segmentation. Other
parts of the creation process, such as data collection, were
not discussed and might be worth further research. Since
quantitative data analysis techniques need quantitative
input, the design and use of surveys especially adapted to
persona creation, for example, could be further explored.
Second, the use of MCA for other applications within the
domain of HCI researched could be explored. For example,
MCA could be use to map personas with scenarios of use.
Finally, detailed guidelines for creating persona
segmentations are not available yet. Although these partly
depend on the research questions, the process of creating
personas is usually still rather intuitive and ad hoc. Efforts
to standardize the process a little more could be of great
value to bring more rigor and science to persona creation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research described in this paper has been made possible
by the TERENCE project funded by FP7-ICT-2009-5.
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