In addition, actors could also be valuable in usability testing by encouraging
dialogue between the participants and the researchers. The use of actors removes the
ethical problems of “protecting the users”, and it is possible to envisage a situation
where the designers and the users can verbally attack each another as part of
addressing the usability issues of a particular system – a situation which would be
difficult in a traditional usability laboratory setting, and likely to be unethical.
Actors
can also present a more generic picture of a user and can change their personae in
response to requests from the designers