Presenting at the African Cyber Citizenship Conference

Shado Masilela presented a paper at the 2016 African Cyber Citizenship Conference held in Port Elizabeth on the 31st October and the 1st November. The paper, titled "Using personas to understand city residents' information needs and evaluate city information services" was based on the work that Shado completed for her honours during 2015.

Based on interviews with city residents, she developed a set of five personas of typical Johannesburg residents and their information needs. She then used these needs and the profile of each individual to evaluate the City's web site to see how well it was meeting the needs of the different types of residents. She identified several ways for the city to offer better information services to residents.

The paper also investigated the usefulness of the persona method for understanding information needs and provision.


The paper has been published in the conference proceedings and a copy can be downloaded here:

Backhouse J and Masilela S (2016). Using personas to understand city residents’ information needs and evaluate city information services. Proceedings of the African Cyber Citizenship Conference 2016, 31 Oct- 1 Nov 2016, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. pp.232-242.