Non-human personas in practice
How IBM considered frogs as a non-human stakeholder in the design of a citizen science app.
Co-written with Isabella Bain (Lead designer of the FrogID app and former design director at IBM Australia)
This is the third and final part of an article series discussing non-human personas as an emerging tool in UX design. Parts of this article appear in a forthcoming OzCHI’22 industry case study paper with the title “Designing for Personas That Don’t Have a Voice”.
The Litoria bella frog embodies the unmatched beauty of nature. The bright green colour that runs across its back melds into a lucid yellow on the sides and a splash of orange on its belly.
Native to a small part of Australia, known as the Cape York Peninsula, it was discovered a few years ago. Also referred to as Cape York Graceful Treefrog, the frog was identified as a distinct species through advanced DNA testing and analysing the frog’s advertising call.
Litoria bella is the 239th known frog species in Australia. Sadly, while scientists are still discovering new species, at least four Australian frog species are assumed to be already extinct.
Frogs are considered a highly threatened species as they are impacted by habitat loss, habitat modification, disease, harvesting, and invasive species [1, 2, 3]. More than 20 percent of Australia’s frog species are officially classified as threatened.
The wellbeing of our planet’s ecological systems depends on frogs as they are the first to respond to any kind of environmental change, such as pollution, climate change, or habitat change. As amphibian biologist Jodi Rowley explains, that’s why frogs are often referred to as the “canary in the coal mine” — their disappearance is an early warning that something is wrong with the environment.
The FrogID project — crowdsourcing the recording of frog calls
To raise awareness about the threats to frogs and to support efforts to identify and protect frog species in Australia, the Australian Museum in partnership with IBM Australia launched the FrogID project in 2017.
One of the challenges when it comes to conservation strategies is the lack of data about existing species and their distribution. The FrogID project applies a citizen science approach, giving people a tool — in the form of a mobile app — to help identify frogs across Australia.
Instead of relying on photographs, which is an approach typically used in citizen science apps, the FrogID app allows anyone to record male frog advertisement calls via their smartphone’s microphone [2].
Designing for frogs as a non-human “stakeholder” presented a new challenge for IBM’s design team, according to Isabella Bain, former Design Director at IBM Australia.
In this article, which I co-wrote with Isabella Bain, we analyse how the design team used non-human personas to capture the frogs’ perspectives and how this informed the design of the FrogID app experience.
Collecting data about the human/non-human stakeholders
Two initially identified stakeholder groups were scientists, who were manually collecting frog calls and thus offering insights into that process, and frogs as the directly affected non-human stakeholder group.
The design team collected data about both stakeholder groups through interviews, contextual inquiries, and on-site observations referred to as “ride alongs”. These ride alongs were used to go through the process of capturing frog calls and to understand the constraints of doing this without disturbing frogs in their natural habitat.
Developing the human/non-human personas
The collected data was then synthesised and captured in the form of two personas, following the process and structure defined by IBM’s field guide and IBM’s personas specification.
A persona to represent the scientists stakeholder group, referred to as “Jodi”, was created, capturing how scientists collect frog calls and as part of that process interact with frogs.
The non-human persona, referred to as “Bella” (named after the Litoria bella species) was developed as an archetype representative of frogs. This included how the frogs would react to citizen scientists entering their habitat.
The human persona captured user attributes, a description, needs, pain points, and behaviours and actions.
The non-human persona also included a description, needs, and pain points as well as details about the frog’s calling period (replacing the user attributes) and information about breeding biology, similar species, and distribution.
The personas were developed during the discovery phase to ensure that any subsequent design decisions were anchored in a deep understanding of the relevant stakeholders and their goals and needs.
The team also used the personas to ensure that they were solving for the “right problem”. To achieve this, the team completed empathy maps from the perspective of the personas.
Putting the personas to use with a scenario map
To map out the current experience of both personas, the team created current-state flows for both Bella and Jodi represented as an “as-is” scenario map.
The scenario map captured and documented a collective understanding of the workflows involved in the process of recording frog calls. By including both personas in one map, the team was able to understand where and how the experiences overlapped.
During the ideation process, the scenario map helped to identify the boundaries—i.e. what aspects needed to be considered in the design of the app. The team used the map as a starting point for generating ideas and as an artefact to assess any design decisions and directions.
Both the personas and scenario map were placed on a wall and used as reference points during the daily design team meetings and during meetings with the wider team. Throughout the development of the application the design team actively developed, maintained, and used the personas, to keep their perspectives, goals, and needs at the forefront when making design decisions.
How the non-human persona influenced design decisions
A key concern captured in the non-human persona and emphasised through the scenario map was that frogs stop calling when they feel threatened or disturbed within their natural habitat.
This concern led to two design decisions. First, dark colours were used in the user interface to reduce the amount of light emitted from the phone’s screen.
Second, the app had to be designed in a way that did not inadvertently encourage the citizen scientists to disturb or damage the frog’s habitat. To address this, a “safe frogging pledge” was included that each user needed to agree to before they were able to access the application’s full functionality.
Another concern that was based on considering frogs as indirect “users” related to the orientation of the phone. Early on, the team assumed that pointing the microphone towards the frog would enhance the quality of the recording.
This hypothesis was documented against the as-is experience and then role-played out in the field through a ride-along observation with the herpetology team. Based on these experiments, it turned out that the orientation of the phone did not have any significant impact on the recording.
However, having to change the orientation of the phone caused confusion and extended the time it took to record a frog call. As a result, the design team dropped the idea of rotating the screen orientation and replaced the application’s original home screen with the recording page to enable citizen scientists to record a frog call at a moment’s notice.
UX design and environmental concerns
The case of FrogID represents an example, where there is a clear link between the design of the interactive application and its impact on frogs as a non-human stakeholder group.
But considering non-human stakeholders is a worthwhile exercise in any design project. UX designers often falsely believe that their design decisions have no impact on the environment. It may be less obvious compared to designing physical products but even the digital interactions that we design have a hidden impact on the environment.
For example, the increased use of digital services like search engines, the reliance on mobile devices and the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies has an overwhelming effect on energy use and resource exploitation, which in turn might indirectly affect non-human stakeholders.
This analysis of non-human personas also contributes to a broader discourse — which can be summarised as a call to move away from focusing on the human end-user as the sole stakeholder and to consider the wider social, environmental, and economic context [4].
This discourse has spurred the development of new paradigms, such as sustainable human-computer interaction [5], animal-computer interaction [6], more-than-human participation [7], and life-centred design [8, 9].
Practical considerations
Based on the reflective account of the FrogID case study and previous work on non-human personas [10, 11], we propose six considerations for designers.
Connect human and non-human concerns. Through mapping out the intersecting experiences of human and non-human stakeholders, designers can gain deeper insights into some of the issues that need to be addressed. In the FrogID project, connecting both human and non-human personas in the scenario map enabled the design team to identify where their experiences intersect and how these interactions might affect the non-human stakeholder.
Look for invisible stakeholder groups. Not all design projects involve an obvious non-human persona. Even in the FrogID project there were likely other invisible non-human stakeholders that may be impacted by the citizen scientists recording frog calls, such as other species sharing the frog’s habitat. Designers can use tools like the impact ripple canvas and systems maps to uncover indirectly affected stakeholder groups.
Keep non-human perspectives at the centre. Designers have the responsibility to provide the space and opportunity for non-human personas to have a voice. As demonstrated in the FrogID case study, this can be achieved by creating physical representations in the form of artefacts and setting up a physical room and activities to support maintaining empathy throughout the design process.
Eliminate biases. A common fallacy in design is to make assumptions based on the designer’s knowledge and experience, which is one of the risks associated with the use of personas [12]. When working with stakeholders that don’t have a voice, it is especially critical to look for data that validates assumptions and brings in additional insights. For example, this might involve working with experts or analysing scientific reports about the identified non-human species.
Consider additional interventions. Tools like personas and scenario maps can trigger ideas for additional interventions that support addressing the design problem. In the FrogID case study, the design team went beyond designing a mobile application and also created a promotion campaign and other initiatives to increase awareness about species extinction and encourage communities to build habitats for frogs.
Engage all team members. Bringing the concerns of non-human personas into a design process is likely to face resistance from other team members and raise questions about cost-benefit trade-offs. As found in the FrogID case study, making sure that all the members of the wider team (not just the designers) are part of the process, can overcome barriers and ensure that all members have a sense of ownership. To support this, design artefacts should not just be owned by the design team but serve as a shared interface that everyone can contribute to.
Final words
The considerations outlined above are not just limited to non-human stakeholders. They can equally be used to represent human stakeholder groups that do not have a voice, such as patients that are in a comma, people at the fringes that for political or cultural reasons are not able to participate in research and design sessions, and future generations — those that are not yet born but may be affected by the designs we create and use today.
To learn more about this topic:
- Read the first and second parts of this article series, which make a case for non-human personas and propose a framework for developing non-human personas.
- Try out our free non-human personas template available as Miro and Mural versions.
- We will add the link to the full OzCHI’22 paper on which this article is based as soon as it has been archived in the ACM conference proceedings.
Acknowledgements
FrogID involved a large interdisciplinary team of conservation experts, amphibian biologists, data analysts, developers, and designers. This article only reports on a small subset of the design aspects that were particularly concerned with frogs as a non-human stakeholder. More details about the project and references to academic articles can be found in the FrogID report. The visual representations of both personas included in this article were recreated as replicas of the original personas.
References
- James P. Collins and Andrew Storfer. 2003. Global amphibian declines: sorting the hypotheses. Diversity and Distributions 9, 2 (2003), 89–98.
- Jodi JL Rowley, Corey T Callaghan, Timothy Cutajar, Christopher Portway, Kathy Potter, Stephen Mahony, Dane F Trembath, Paul Flemons, and Adam Woods. 2019. FrogID: Citizen scientists provide validated biodiversity data on frogs of Australia. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 14, 1 (2019), 155–170.
- Simon N. Stuart, Janice S. Chanson, Neil A. Cox, Bruce E. Young, Ana S. L. Rodrigues, Debra L. Fischman, and Robert W. Waller. 2004. Status and Trends of Amphibian Declines and Extinctions Worldwide. Science 306, 5702 (2004), 1783–1786.
- Tad Hirsch, Phoebe Sengers, Eli Blevis, Richard Beckwith, and Tapan Parikh. 2010. Making Food, Producing Sustainability. In CHI ’10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) (CHI EA ’10). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3147–3150.
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- Clara Mancini. 2011. Animal-Computer Interaction: A Manifesto. Interactions 18, 4, 69–73.
- Rachel Clarke, Sara Heitlinger, Ann Light, Laura Forlano, Marcus Foth, and Carl DiSalvo. 2019. More-than-human participation: design for sustainable smart city futures. Interactions 26, 3 (April 2019), 60–63.
- Madeleine Borthwick, Martin Tomitsch, and Melinda Gaughwin. 2022. From Human-Centred to Life-Centred Design: Considering Environmental and Ethical Concerns in the Design of Interactive Products. Journal of Responsible Technology 10 (2022), 100032.
- Damien Lutz. 2022. The Life-Centred Design Guide. Future Scouting, Sydney.
- Jessica K Frawley, Laurel E Dyson (2014). Animal personas: acknowledging non-human stakeholders in designing for sustainable food systems. Proceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference. ACM.
- Martin Tomitsch, Joel Fredericks, Dan Vo, Jessica Frawley, and Marcus Foth. 2021. Non-Human Personas: Including Nature in the Participatory Design of Smart Cities. Interaction Design and Architecture(s) 50 (2021).
- Nicola Marsden and Maren Haag. 2016. Stereotypes and politics: reflections on personas. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. 4017–4031.
