Hot take on user personas

In my opinion, user personas are one of the activities that you should either do it right, or don't do it at all.

Half-baked personas, or worse, AI-generated, fake, guessed, hypothetical personas could be more distructive than beneficial. It could steer the whole organisation with massive efforts in the wrong direction. Even if personas were defined based on actual research. They're just as good as the ones helped create them.

Personas that designers include in their portfolios these days are full of BS. How the hell is a progress bar going help me understand the user better? 🙃

Good user personas are NOT

• just demographics 🫠

• just a checklist of questions to ask 🫠

• just quoting stuff they said 🫠

• 
  

Good user personas:

• 👉 tell real stories

• 👉 capture their emotions,

and observations of

• 👉 their context,

• 👉 their motivations,

• 👉 their environments and surroundings,

• 👉 their behaviours, conscious and unconscious

So.. again, either do them right or don't do them at all.