Modelling child persona for social behaviours in social network sites

Children are becoming dependent on social network sites (SNS) to gratify their social needs. They are increasingly becoming users of SNS and emerging as an important user group. Despite much literature on children, not much is known about the social behaviour of the children when they gain access to SNS. It is due to limited access to children due to policy, legal or ethical reasons. This research identified children social behaviour to understand how they behave in SNS. Subsequent to this, a child persona was modelled to represent children as a social networker. The creation of persona involved three steps, including collecting user data, segmenting data into groups and transferring data into persona. In user research, qualitative approach was carried out through self-reporting method such as cultural probes and interviews. It involved seven children between the ages of 10-12 years old. The initial phase in user research involved designing children's probes for capturing social behaviour. Then, the research conducted a contextual data collection in situ and over time, as part of children's daily life. The findings showed that the probes approach can be a potential method for children to self-report their social behaviour related to SNS. The identification of social behaviour was done by analysing qualitative data to generate related themes, categories and codes. The classification of these themes can be made into social connectivity, social activity and social goal. Consequently, the findings exhibited a behavioural pattern that was used as a basis of segmentation and persona creation. The segmentation process was carried out to cluster children into several segments based on their similarities. The segment was further transformed into child persona in which was later evaluated by researcher, children and experts. The research findings highlight a set of child personas which can contribute to the understanding of the children social behaviour in SNS. These personas are significant as user model for presenting data from user research that will help researchers to identify real child users of SNS.