False preconceptions about users can result in poor design, product development, and marketing decisions, so rectifying these preconceptions is essential for organizations. This research quantitatively evaluates the ability of data-driven personas to alter decision makers’ preconceptions about their online social media users. We conduct a within-participant experiment of 31 professionals carrying out a workplace task scenario. The participants’ conceptions of user attributes are recorded both before and after interacting with personas created from real user analytics data. Using statistical analysis to compare the responses, we find that personas had a significant effect on changing preconceptions about the audience segments. After interacting with personas, 81% of the participants changed their preconceptions of the audience, and 94% of the participants maintained or increased the accuracy of their perceptions of the audience after engaging with the personas. Moreover, the confidence of the participants in their responses increased. However, two participants did not change their preconceptions even when faced with contradictory factual information, which highlights the need for accompanying initiatives to align user preconceptions with user data fully.

关于用户的错误观念会导致不良的设计，产品开发和营销决策，因此纠正这些观念对于组织至关重要。这项研究定量评估了数据驱动型角色改变决策者对其在线社交媒体用户的先入之见的能力。我们对31名专业人员进行了一项参与者内部实验，以执行工作场所任务方案。在与由真实用户分析数据创建的角色交互之前和之后，都会记录参与者的用户属性概念。使用统计分析来比较回答，我们发现角色对于改变受众群体的先入之见具有重大影响。与角色互动后，81％的参与者改变了对受众的观念，94％的参与者在与角色互动后保持或提高了他们对听众的感知准确性。此外，参与者对他们的回应的信心也增加了。但是，即使面对矛盾的事实信息，两名参与者也没有改变他们的先入之见，这突显了需要采取配套行动使用户的先入之见与用户数据完全相符的需求。