Guiding Personas for Continuous Science
Understanding the needs, challenges, and motivations of six key groups shaping scientific communication and collaboration.
Contents
Public
The general public receives, interprets and reshapes scientific information as they share it with their communities and digital networks. Their engagement, questions, and feedback also influence how researchers frame, and communicate their work.
🧍🏻Profile
- Consume scientific research and insights
- Indirectly fund scientific research through their government
- Focus on translating research insights into practical applications for daily life
🎯 Goals
- Open access to all scientific research findings
- Science communication is easy to consume and understand
- Accelerate research-to-market timelines
😞 Frustrations
- Limited access to cutting-edge research insights
- Complexity of research communication
- Difficulty in real-world application of research findings
- Lengthy research processes / research-to- market timelines
- Misinformation and inability to assess quality and credibility of published research
💚 Preferences
- User-friendly, interactive, easy to understand research articles
- Trusted messengers
- Interactive opportunities to enhance understanding
- Meeting the public where they are vs. traditional academic formats
- Robust, consistent, quality control and research integrity
💭 Behavioral Considerations
- Selective interest and engagement in science
- Personal experiences and political views impact acceptance and belief of scientific findings
- Content and information overwhelm
- Credibility can be tied to the messenger rather than the message or methodology
📍 Where to Find
- Traditional Media
- Digital and Social Media
- Educational institutions
- Professional and community organizations
- Government and policy channels
Bringing the Persona to Life¶
The general public interprets and reshapes scientific information as they encounter it in news stories, classrooms, workplaces, and daily life. While often indirect participants in the research process, they play a vital role in how science is trusted, applied, and communicated. Their questions, needs, and lived experiences help frame what science is for—and who it serves.
🪪 Shamira
- Age: 25
- Single Mom, 10-yr old daughter
- Lives in New Delhi, India
- Works in education
⁉️ Why
- Her daughter has juvenile diabetes and she struggles to get access to the information she needs to understand the landscape and the disease
- Feels fairly frustrated with the current system - she cannot access the literature and gets talked down to by medical professionals who think she can’t quite understand it,
- Limited access in New Delhi to innovations around the world
🙏 Needs
- Ensure care for her daughter
- Free and immediate access to the literature as she trusts the data even if she doesn’t always understand it (can’t wait years for the insights)
- Participate in patient advocacy groups and dialogue with other patient families
- Build her own evidence to advocate with health care professionals
