Representing Religious Practices via AI-Generated Personas: A Case Study of Ramadan Behaviors from Four Predominantly Muslim Countries

With nearly two billion Muslims worldwide, designing technology that serves their needs is a significant task, especially during Ramadan, the season of spiritual reflection and change in lifestyle. We present a data-driven approach to generating personas representing differing religious views of Ramadan, based on a large-scale survey conducted in four Muslim-majority countries: Egypt, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. Our approach furthers the representation of underrepresented groups by embedding religious and cultural factors in persona development, aligning with the principles of value-sensitive design. Via correlation analysis, we identified seven distinct groups that reflect diverse practices and values during the Islamic holy month. These findings informed persona creation, capturing variations in spiritual engagement, digital media consumption, and the planning of Ramadan. The resulting personas provide actionable insights for developers designing inclusive applications such as charitable platforms and ecommerce systems aligned with Muslim values. We discuss the implications of employing personas for culturally aware system design and demonstrate how AI-generated personas can support inclusive design in religiously diverse settings. Ultimately, this work contributes to the growing research on human-centered technologies for value-aligned and context-aware systems.