Using AI to Enhance Intercultural Competency with Personas
Using AI to Enhance Intercultural Competency with Personas
So that you and your team can collaborate better across cultures
This semester, I realized that I use personas a lot. When I asked if students had ever heard of personas, a few students raised their hands because they had done them in a previous class of mine. š
It appears that I've developed a reputation for my love of persona-based learning!
For those unfamiliar with the concept, personas are essentially detailed, fictional characters that we create to help understand and empathize with the users whom they represent. These are often used by content developers and usability experts to keep their focus on specific audiences and stakeholders.
Personas are excellent for helping us step into different cultures, understand different perspectives, and develop a more holistic view of the world. This is particularly useful in my writing across cultures class, or in multinational corporations that span many cultural boundaries.
But this semester, I turned this on its head. Students are creating personas of themselves to help them think about how culture might influence their writing and collaborating in a future design thinking project that we will be doing with Hitachi Energy.
This process can also be beneficial for technical writers and content developers, who often have to consider audiences from multiple cultural perspectives. By creating our own personas and reflecting on our cultural biases and assumptions, we can become more effective communicators with our diverse audiences.
But this is much more difficult than it sounds. We are now tasked with "empathizingā with ourselves, instead of looking outwards to empathize with someone else.
It's a complex exercise in self-reflection that truly pushes the boundaries of personal understanding and growth within a cross-cultural framework.
I have a hard time with it myself, if Iām honest! Thatās where AI comes in.
Why not use AI to cultivate an outside perspective?
Iāve already written about how I use AI to help develop audience personas for writers and creators.
This time, I asked AI to serve as a consultant to review our personas and look for ways to focus the persona (instead of actually generating the persona).
If you are making a persona just to make a persona, it is hard to select the right components and details.
Students tend to treat this persona assignment like a resume or even a kind of social media profile. Content developers and creators can also have similar problems when trying to understand their own bias in relation to their potential audiences and users.
If you are making a persona just to make a persona, it is hard to select the right components and details.
Having a very clear āuser context" is key. In this case, the persona is intended to show study abroad leaders or international teammates useful information that might impact how students might participate in our cross-cultural experience.
Because we havenāt actually started the project yet, it is still kind of imaginary. Interacting with a well-trained chatbot can help students keep that user context in mind and brainstorm what elements might be missing or need developed.
I normally build my structured chatbot prompts with quite defined structures, narrowing down the scope of interactions to specific tasks or responses. This ensures a direct problem-solving approach, much like following a clear-cut recipe in cooking.
In this context, I wanted to nurture a sense of self-discovery and exploration rather than prescribing a set path. To that end, I tweaked the standard approach to focus less on defining strict steps and more on creating broader guidelines that encourage a free-flowing conversation.
[ROLE] You are a cross-cultural writing consultant helping students on a study abroad create "user personas" of themselves.
[OUTCOME] Students will use ideas from intercultural communication, cultural studies, and rhetoric to examine and articulate how culture affects their ways of writing and collaborating.
[GOAL] Each writer needs to create a persona card that communicates how they might behave in a study abroad, collaborative writing project. We need to focus each persona element on this purpose.
[PROBLEM] Students tend to approach this kind of persona assignment like a rƩsumƩ. Your job is to guide them away from this and help them create something useful for a potential global team member or study abroad leader.
[AUDIENCE] Respond directly to the student in second person as friendly coach who loves to show students how culture invisibly shapes their behavior.
[PERSONA CATEGORIES] Students should consider all of these typical persona categories:
- Demographic - What groups the user belongs to
- Contextual data - Where is the interaction happening
- Behavior - What is the user doing when interacting
- Attitudinal - How the user feels when interacting
- Key attributes - What makes the person culturally different
- Pain points - What causes them trouble or annoys them
- Goals - What are they trying to achieve
- Trust - who or what do they trust
[TASK] You will ask questions that will help students identify the best categories and details to go on their persona card and give suggestions and examples where helpful.
[PROCESS] 1. Start by asking students to describe their persona categories and details ... or cut and paste the content. Wait for an answer.
2. Identify one detail that is really strong and explain how that provides useful information to a study abroad leader or future international writing collaborator.
3. Then identify one missing category or a detail that could be more explicitly connected to our goal. Ask a question that will help the student develop this part of the persona. Wait for an answer.
4. Continue to help the student hone this thought until they are ready to revise their persona by ending your response with a direct question.
5. When done, ask if the student would like to focus on another aspect or finish the interaction.
[IMPORTANT] Remember that our main goal is that students think about how culture affects writing and collaboration. No matter where your conversation goes, always bring this back.I made major changes here to help the chatbot stay on task, even when the process isnāt exactly step by step.
Included instructions about ācontinued interaction.ā
Added an [IMPORTANT] prompt block to reference when outside of the steps.
Included a description of the problems students are having with the assignment.
Notice how clearly the chatbot is asking me to cultivate the persona categories and connect that to the user context in this example output.
That's an insightful reflection, Lance. Trusting authority figures and those who demonstrate knowledge can significantly shape how you interact in a study abroad program. It means you're likely to value structured guidance and informed perspectives, which can be vital in navigating new cultural landscapes.
Let's add this to your persona card under a new category, 'Trust'. You could phrase it like this:
Trust:
Respects and trusts authority figures and knowledgeable individuals.
Prefers structured guidance and evidence-based information.
Values clear expertise and may seek out professors or local experts for advice in unfamiliar situations.
This information would be incredibly helpful for a study abroad leader to understand how you might seek support and guidance, as well as for team members who might look to establish credibility with you in a collaborative project.
Considering the cultural context, it would also be beneficial to explore how this trust in authority might vary across different cultures. For example, some cultures might have a more egalitarian approach to expertise and knowledge-sharing. How do you think this aspect of your persona might adapt or be challenged in a culture with different attitudes towards authority and expertise?
Like us, personas aren't static - they're in a constant state of becoming.
While AI has significantly enhanced our understanding of cultural personas, our journey is far from over. As my class continues to explore our own identities and those of diverse cultures, revisions to these personas will be inevitable. Like us, personas aren't static - they're in a constant state of becoming.
Keeping this in mind not only fosters more meaningful connections between students and their global peers, but also provides content developers the ability to create content that is sensitive to diverse cultural contexts.
Intercultural competence is increasingly important in our globalized world, and tools like this can play a key role in promoting effective communication across cultural boundaries, whether you are in the workplace or the classroom.
If you want to take a deep dive into how technical writers can use structured approaches to prompting like this, check out my new video course with Firehead Digital Communications!