Repurposing Digital Methods for Human-Centered Design

From logs and information left in online spaces to data points self-generated by connected devices, digital traces have become more diffused over the past years, prompting an expansion of Human-Centered Design methods. Along with some bigdata approaches, Digital Methods of research – treating the actual content of digital users’ manifestation on-line (i.e. tweets, Instagram pictures, comments) – offer the opportunity to better understand users through their online activities. This paper investigates how Digital Methods can be repurposed as a full-fledged approach for Human-Centered Design. Grafting on the NATURPRADI project – a research aimed at describing the debate raised by the re-vegetation of the city of Paris by analysing Twitter posts – in the paper we will explain how we have identified and described a set of personas characterized by different approaches towards the evolution of the urban nature issue. The final objective of the paper is to provide a first methodological tool created at the intersection of Digital Methods and Human-Centered Design discussing its opportunities and criticalities: Data-driven Personas.