Data-Driven Personas for Sustainable Growth

Personas are fictitious persons that represent groups of people and help decision-makers to empathize with the group’s needs, wants, and circumstances, and to make informed decisions. Data-driven personas are generated from actual data about the groups of people. Our research team studies data-driven approaches to persona creation, evaluation, and application using state-of-the-art computational techniques, such as Generative AI, deepfakes, and Metaverse.

Our team members come from various backgrounds (e.g., marketing, computer science, engineering) and study personas in multiple contexts, including sustainable business growth. We are open to research collaboration with other teams, individual researchers (postdocs, professors), and organizations (businesses, non-profits, and policymakers). Read more about us on the Persona Team website.

We welcome applications from students in any major (but with an emphasis on business and computer science fields). Our team is built around a strong collaborative attitude and support for newcomers to be integrated into our research projects. We expect a strong work ethic and willingness to work for a common cause. In return, we provide:

• Forward-thinking supervision focused on increasing your productivity.
• Hands-on support for you to learn practical research skills.
• Mixed-method research opportunities (e.g., user studies, experiments, statistical analysis) in collaboration with specialists.
• Flexible work arrangements, including part-time studies.

See some of our current topical areas. Send an email to the program lead if you are interested in joining our team!

We are open to research and consultation that delivers real-world impact. Our team can help your organization better understand your customers, users, or stakeholders, and make informed decisions. Fields that benefit from personas include, for example, advertising, retail, e-commerce, education, public health, and technology and software development, among others.

In practice, we can collaborate with you in designing data collection activities, carry out persona generation, and train you in how to leverage personas in decision-making. We can also model a whole industry ecosystem as personas, which can be useful for simulating the impact of strategic decisions. 

The research program is led by Associate Professor Joni Salminen.

Contact Information
Email: jonisalm@uwasa.fi