Using AI tools for generating proto-personas

This study investigates the perceptions of higher education stakeholders regarding proto-persona profiles generated manually by experts, automatically by generative AI (GenAI) tools, and via the combination of these methods. Our proto-personas have been devised to support the design of strategies for promoting awareness on responsible computing. We study both their creation processes and their perception by the stakeholders they represent. Our results suggest a great potential of GenAI tools to support the application of the proto-personas technique. Our resulting proto-persona profiles were generally perceived positively by stakeholders, and they also were used effectively to motivate reflection in the intended design context.