Designing with Impossible Voices: an AI Persona Chatbot Methodology.​

This article explores the use of generative AI chatbots as an extension of persona methodology within human-centered design. Conventional personas enable designers to model stakeholder attributes and motivations; these static personas cannot directly participate in a design process. This article defines “impossible voices” as stakeholder perspectives relevant to a design activity but unable to participate directly, and proposes a HAI-Bot persona method for using chatbot personas within human-led design activity. By leveraging GenAI, persona methods can be extended from static profiles into responsive models that participants can question, challenge, and carry into design tasks. Three commercial deployments are presented: YachtBot, created with Premier Yachts to explore a 2030 luxury yacht customer; TreeBot, used with Timber Boats to work with a more-than-human tree and timber perspective; and SpongeBot, developed with Ethical Bathtimes to examine provisional customer and manufacturer positions in early-stage product development. Using a qualitative approach to analyze these cases, the article examines how the HAI-Bot Persona functioned within each design process. The cases show that HAI-Bot personas can support engagement and assumption-testing. The contribution is a GenAI chatbot persona method for working with indirect stakeholder perspectives while keeping design interpretation within design teams.