Role-play Exercises in User Experience-driven Product Development

Abstract

Where ideas exist for products or features, User Experience (UX)-related aspects are usually not given enough consideration. Role-play exercises enable the implicit knowledge of experts which then can be used to identify and refine UX-related factors in product ideas. From early childhood, people use role-play to try out roles and get to know them. Their experience provides them with a more in-depth understanding for the roles and also teaches them how to interact with each other. This original learning method can therefore be applied by most people without a great deal of preparation. Personas (i. e. prototypical user) are ultimately a form of role description and are used as a launching point from which to place ourselves in the position of a user. Scenarios offer contextual information and provide a scope for the role-play exercise to move on.