I Ditched User Personas — And Here’s Why You Should Too

The ugly truth behind the all-encompassing user persona.

Have you ever been told that relying on user personas is problematic in UX? But at the time you were using them? Yeah, me too.

When I was going through my Graphic Design curriculum at university, personas were positioned as the end-all, be-all. We would never start a project without creating a fictional “consumer” first. Later, when I landed my first job as a Graphic Designer at a local startup, we used personas extensively. I even printed out profiles for each user type and hung them on the wall in our common area for the entire team to reference.

Fast forward two years and you’d find me diving head-first into my next role as a UI/UX designer at a digital product studio. During my first week, I overheard someone in passing say, “We all know why we don’t use personas.” Hearing this immediately stopped me in my tracks — how could that be? We used them in college. We used them at my “big girl” job. But all of a sudden, not anymore? What changed?

As my career advanced, the need for user personas rarely came up on any of the projects I worked on — and for good reason too!

Before I dig into why that is, let’s define a user persona together so we’re all on the same page:

According to Nielsen Norman Group, “A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of [a] product. [It] is an archetype instead of an actual living human…”

Give that another read to really absorb it:

“A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of [a] product. [It] is an archetype instead of an actual living human…”

Interesting, isn’t it? Even a source as credible as NN/g shines a bright light on user personas — did you catch that second sentence?

“[It] is an archetype instead of an actual living human…”

As product designers, we are designing for actual living humans. So how much sense does using a persona at a foundational level make when there are actual living humans out there using the products we create?

I’ve thought long and hard about this. And to be completely honest, I never went back to ask that designer I overheard talking about why they thought we shouldn’t use user personas in UX. Instead, I looked back on all the work I had done and debunked this school-taught approach myself.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are certain situations that prove useful to define and utilize personas. For example, personas can be very beneficial when onboarding new designers to a project to help them understand the product space. But most of the time, there are more effective ways to not only communicate, but more importantly test, the effectiveness of a design than using user personas.

As I started to take a more critical look at the design process — and whether or not user personas held a role in it — I documented a handful of observations around user personas in UX:

1. Personas are biased

Have you ever wondered how someone goes about writing a user persona? When done correctly, they would be based on user research. But even when they are, how would one summarize every ounce of detail discovered and pack it into a tight-knit caricature of a “typical user”?

The short answer is you can’t.

The person writing the persona is bound to leave out critical details in order to simplify. And the details that are left out are at the complete discretion of whoever is writing it. Due to natural human inclination and the necessary simplification process, the characterized persona would become biased before it even got a chance to thrive! So right off the bat, you’d be at a disadvantage when narrowly designing a digital product around a persona.

2. Personas are generic

Every user is unique in their own way and has different hardships, backgrounds, and limitations. Personas leave room for gaps and errors because they are inference-based generalizations.

They also don’t provide any information as to why a user behaves as they do (i.e. why does a user do X, when would a user do X, etc). There’s a big difference between personas used in marketing versus product.

While marketing personas can help a marketer understand how to target a user, they don’t tell a product designer what makes a user tick.

For example, take a look at this basic persona:

George is a single 32-year-old male living in New York City with a steady income and likes to play pick-up basketball in his free time.

A marketer would be able to infer how to target George for advertising purposes related to a new athleisure brand coming to market, but a product designer crafting a mobile fitness experience wouldn’t be able to understand how to create a good product based on that information alone without inquiring further.

And even if a product designer did infer deeper on this archetype by conducting user interviews, they would still only meet the needs of a single persona and not get a sense of the full user base. This is exactly why designers are advised to conduct user testing with a minimum of 5 users — check out this article from NN/g for more details.

All in all, personas miss critical details about subsidiary users, ultimately creating a product that is only crafted for a select number of people. This leads us to #3…

3. Personas are exclusive

The NN/g definition says it all:

“A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user.”

Personas are based on assumptions about who we think a typical user is — not those who actually make up the user base.

As product designers, we should be designing for the entire user base and doing everything in our power to create a platform that is accessible to everyone — not just the typical or target user. It is our job to design inclusively so that the products we design can be used — and enjoyed! — by everyone.

There’s a better approach

As mentioned earlier, personas aren’t always bad — the product space is just not the most ideal place for them. So what should you use instead?

I like to lean into user research and continuous iteration in order to create a strong empathetic bond with the user base.

User research on its own can open the doors to understanding a market on a deeper level. But when you take that and apply what you learn to a design by continuously iterating on it, you’re able to create a strong empathetic bond with users and truly become an expert and advocate for them over time.

By following this approach, you not only create a product that users appreciate, but you eliminate the assumptions and generalizations that personas leave open.

So the next time you’re in the discovery phase, I challenge you to stick up for the underdogs and make your product accessible for everyone by tossing out the persona mentality.

Ali pushes pixels and shapes user experiences at Livefront.