Play 24 - Conduct research through informational interviews to create user personas or a community audit
Relational play for data stewards: Conduct research through informational interviews to create user personas or a community audit.
Organizations wishing to expand public engagement with their collected data or data governance can start by investigating the holistic picture of each actor, including their values, incentives, and capacity, through informational interviews. Questions may include:
- What are your goals in using the data?
- What is your understanding of data governance (or privacy, security, ownership, #management, data’s intended uses, etc.)?
- What is your capacity for engagement with the data or its owners?
- What incentivizes you to be involved or to use the data?
- What might concern you about using the data or being involved with its governance?
Organizations can hold informational interviews in order to 1) create user personas or 2) conduct a community audit. In creating user personas, data stewards can interview interested community actors to then create a persona that represents a type of actor. For example, if an organization interviews five teachers, they can “collate that research and personify specific trends and patterns in the data as a persona.”[1] Using personas like these can help organizations understand patterns, especially if they have a large number of potential actors with whom they want to engage. Useful resources on how to create personas include those created by the Interaction Design Foundation and And Academy.
Organizations can also use informational interviews to seed information for a community audit. This would be more useful if you plan to engage a more specific, smaller group of people and want to understand specific users. Interviews in this vein can focus more on descriptions of specific people, deeper motivating scenarios (what's the situation or challenge that brought them here?), and what they specifically need from the engagement. This kind of analysis can support understanding of what successful engagement looks like for one particular user, and if users can meet their particular goals in a way that brings value to the broader picture of data governance and use.
🌱 Each play stems from a takeaway from an case study, workshop, or other learning source.
Takeaway: Truly participatory data governance requires deep understanding of each user, including their values, incentives, and #capacity.
Data governance as a concept can be difficult to understand, especially for those new to ideas surrounding data literacy. Data stewards and organizations can make governance more accessible by understanding how and why a user might want to interact with the data or its governance structures, and thus design appropriate avenues for engagement.
Source: Community Data Playbook (Full report)