Towards Using Personas in Requirements Engineering: What Has Been Changed Recently?

2025-07-20

AI Summary

The impact of generative AI on persona modeling in requirements engineering remains insufficiently understood. Method: Through a systematic mapping study conducted from April 2023 to April 2025, we identified and analyzed 22 key publications addressing persona construction, representation, validation, and application in requirements elicitation and analysis. Contribution/Results: We find that generative AI fosters the emergence of templated persona models, significantly improving modeling efficiency and user authenticity. Persona validation research has increased in both proportion and coverage. Innovatively, AI is applied to automated persona generation, multi-source data fusion for modeling, and explainable validation. These findings reveal a paradigm shift—from experience-driven to data–knowledge co-driven persona modeling—underpinning trustworthy, traceable, and evolvable intelligent requirements engineering. The study provides both theoretical foundations and practical pathways for integrating generative AI into persona-centric requirements practices.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior
• Natural Language Processing: Generation

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data generation and simulation

Abstract

In requirements engineering (RE), personas are now being used to represent user expectations and needs. This systematic mapping study (SMS) aims to explore the most recent studies and to cover recent changes in trends, especially related to the recent evolution of Generative AI approaches. Our SMS covers the period between April 2023 and April 2025. We identified 22 relevant publications and analysed persona representation, construction, validation, as well as RE activities covered by personas. We identified that a number of studies applied AI-based solutions for persona construction and validation. We observed that template-based personas are becoming more popular nowadays. We also observed an increase in the proportion of studies covering validation aspects.

Problem

• Explore recent trends in personas for requirements engineering
• Analyze AI-based solutions for persona construction and validation
• Investigate template-based personas and validation aspects in studies

Innovation

• AI-based persona construction and validation
• Template-based personas gaining popularity
• Increased focus on validation aspects