Strategic Personas at the Intersection of HCI and Marketing: A Framework Inspired by Virtual Chess Players

Abstract

Conventional personas have always been attractive tools for HCI and marketing researchers. Although they allow researchers to show differences between personas by providing demographic and psychographic information, they generally do not explain how these personas behave or make decisions. This paper considers a unique perspective that views personas as strategic agents. In other words, the personality of a user emerges while making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. The paper is inspired by previous research on virtual chess players, where he explored players of the same strength, but with different playing styles, and identified that chess styles play an important role in determining game outcomes. Additionally, it develops a new attacker–defender orientation space and identifies three behavioral dimensions that can be detected based on the sequence of decisions or actions performed by a person. The paper also shows how to move these ideas from the domain of chess to marketing strategies and the design of interactive systems. Finally, it discusses the influence of these ideas on customer targeting, brand posture, interaction design, and AI-mediated agents. The findings confirm that strategic personas allow predicting behavior, performing simulations, and real-time adaptation. Most importantly, they augment traditional personas instead of replacing them.

Keywords: Personas, Human–computer Interaction, Strategic Behavior, Marketing Analytics, Virtual Agents, Chess

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007587