Using Cluster Analysis in Persona Development

divide the dimensions into 5 major components. Each
component can be regarded as an independent cluster of needs.
Cluster Analysis (CA) involves the categorization of data.
It divides a large group of observations into subsets so that
observations within each subset are relatively similar while
observations in different groups are relatively dissimilar. Two
major different types of cluster analysis are widely used:
hierarchical methods (in which the k-cluster solution is
constructed by joining together two clusters from the k+1
cluster solution) and partitioning methods (in which the
observations are separated into a given number of subsets, and
the k-cluster solution and the k+1 cluster solution are not
necessarily nested) [4]. In both methods, there is no definitive
answer regarding how many clusters should be chosen. It is up
to the analyst to determine the “best” cluster solution.
Since its objective is to address the heterogeneity in each
data subset, cluster analysis has become a common tool for
marketing researchers to develop empirical groupings of
persons, products, and usage occasions that share certain
common characteristics. While its primary use has been
focused on market segmentation, there is growing interest on
applying cluster analysis into the classification of relevant
buyer characteristics and identify homogeneous groups of
customers [6]. The results of cluster analysis can contribute to
the definition of a classification scheme, or indicate rules for
assigning new cases to classes, or provide measures of
definition, size and change of broad concepts, or find
representative users and respective classification from a large
sample, which is most important in user experience research.
III. METHOD
We worked with a company to develop the Personas for
their online travel service business. The company’s main
business is selling airline tickets, hotel bookings and tour
packages through the company websites and telephone booking
system. The company has been in business for a few years and
has enjoyed stable growth of their core business.
We were given two typical user descriptions by the
company’s marketing department. The descriptions include the
gender, age, annual income, family members, frequency using
the company’s service, etc. We were to find out and write the
Personas for their online tickets booking business.
A. Participants and Procedure
1) Recruiting participants:
The two typical user profiles given to us are based on the
marketing department recommendation. We refined the profile
by.
1: Include people who have not used the company’s online
booking system but they have similar experience on
competitors’ websites to our user base.
2: Find out the users’ goals and their decision making
process.
We decided to use an online survey to gather more user
data. We recruited a total of 24 participants from two sources.
Although more participants are appropriate for the qualitative
analysis, we are limited by the project budget and time. First,
we selected some participants from the name list given to us by
the company market department. These participants have used
the company service and were willing to participant in the
company’s future customer researches. Then, we put on
advertisement which specified the type of people that we are
looking. Using the advisement, we recruited some
participants who had not used the company website but had
similar experience with competitor’s products.
2) Defining dimensions
In the Persona Creation and Usage Toolkit [5], Olsen thinks
that Personas should include information in the following
categories:
• Persona’s Biographic Background
• Business’ Relation to Persona
• Persona’s Relation to Product/Business
• Specific Goals/ Needs/ Attitudes
• Specific Knowledge / Proficiency
• Context of Usage
• Interaction Characteristics of Usage
• Information Characteristics of Usage
• Sensory/Immersive Characteristics of Use
• Emotional Characteristics of Usage
• Accessibility Issues
He also outlines the dimensions in each of the categories.
Using the categories and dimensions outlined by Olson as
template, and after discussing with the company
representatives, we identified 45 dimensions that would be
used in our survey. Among them:
1: 18 dimensions will be used in the Persona definitions.
These dimensions, such as Persona’s Biographic Background
and these attributes will be used in the final Personas definition
but they do not contribute to the user clustering analysis.
2: 27 dimensions will be used in the clustering of the users.
These dimensions represent user goals and behaviors, such as:
• What is your spending habits in purchasing travel
products?
• How will you select a travel agent?
• What is your frequency of traveling? etc.
3) Measuring dimensions
For each of the dimensions, we asked the participants to
rate it on the scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the lowest and 7 the
highest. For some of the dimensions that can not be easily
measured by the participants’ subjective ratings, we used
standard measurement tools. For example, on the question
regarding the participants spending habit: is he emotional or
rational, we asked 7 indirect questions. With the answers, we