‘Personas for lighting’. Three methods to develop personas for the indoor lighting environment

The objective of this research is to describe and compare three different methods of generating ‘persona for lighting’ to envision users’ behaviour within the lighting environment. ‘Personas’ are used to represent typical users, highlighting their needs, perspectives, and expectations to aid user-centric design approaches. The researchers looked for the most useful method of shaping ‘personas for lighting’ to learn about users’ satisfaction with the various lighting conditions to identify their needs. Method one of lighting persona development, was based on interviews with 87 users of five buildings of four different types: an office, a primary school, two university buildings, and a factory. The lighting conditions were observed and measured in all the buildings. As a result, 22 personas for lighting were created. In method two personas were generated based on pre-interviews, workshops on lighting and post-interviews with ten users along with the onsite lighting measurements. Later, due to the Covid-19 pandemic's lockdowns, an online survey on the visual lighting environment in home offices was carried out among 694 students and professionals from seven countries to create two more personas for lighting (method three). All 26 ‘personas for lighting’ were generated in relation to observed lighting conditions, based on the satisfaction, preferences and needs of the users working within variously lit indoor environments. All the tested methods can be used for nearly any type of building and room, but the resulting personas are different due to the specific limitations of the methods. The created personas may help to identify future users’ lighting preferences, needs and requirements and assist designers. However, to fully understand their impact on the lighting research practice they should be tested in real projects.