How Can Natural Language Processing and Generative AI Address Grand Challenges of Quantitative User Personas?

Joni Salminen, Soon-Gyo Jung, Hind A. Al-Merekhi, Erik Cambria, Bernard J. Jansen

Abstract: Human-computer interaction (HCI) and natural language processing (NLP) can engage in mutually beneficial collaboration. This article summarizes previous literature to identify grand challenges for the application of NLP in quantitative user personas (QUPs), which exemplifies such collaboration. Grand challenges provide a collaborative starting point for researchers working at the intersection of NLP and QUPs, towards improved user experiences. NLP research could also benefit from focusing on generating user personas by introducing new solutions to specific NLP tasks, such as classification and generation. We also discuss the novel opportunities introduced by Generative AI to address the grand challenges, offering illustrative examples.