Beyond Personas: Behavioral Archetypes for UX Research
An approach that allows us to focus, reduce complexity and gain insights for strategic decision-making while designing new products or services.
“We are, as species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories” (Jonathan Gottschall). Stories played a key role in our survival being the way we passed knowledge from generation to generation. Nowadays we still have stories everywhere, it´s not only in fictional novels or movies. It is the way we make sense of the world around us. That´s why when we receive new information that is crafted as a story it´s easier for us to understand and remember it. As human beings, we are drawn to stories, whether we realize it or not. Being aware of this, Designers have created a tool that helps us synthesize data (user research) in the form of fictional characters called “User Personas”.
Before “User Personas” what we found were the typical market segmentations that grouped people based on socio-demographic characteristics: gender, age, location, income etc. We would find groups of people that had similar external characteristics and this was supposed to help us decide what they want on a product or service. But, what happens when we define people based on socio-demographic characteristics? The image below shows how Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourn share the same characteristics, yet as you can imagine very different lifestyles and tastes. This framework was lacking to understand how complex we are, and how much diversity we can encounter.
Designers came up with the figure of “User Personas” that brought a new approach to seeing people as real human beings instead of numbers. Including our wide range of interests, fears, and desires. To really understand our customers, we needed a more holistic approach that could show this diversity.
The output of the tool would look like something on the image below. A full bio detailing their preferences, favorite brands, etc.
Some time ago, I was working on a project on building a new transportation service. We built “User Personas” that were so detailed they even included what Netflix show this group of people prefers. It´s a nice way of gaining empathy toward users, but it was way too much. Unnecessary and irrelevant details about each group of users that were fun to build, but were not useful when we had to make choices. Later in my career, I learned about “Behavioral Archetypes” and realized it was the perfect evolution for the “User Personas” within the Design thinking process.
From User Personas to Behavioral Archetypes
A Behavioral Archetype is also a fictional character that is created to represent a type of user. It keeps this storytelling that is so important when we are bringing this data to people in a compelling way. The main difference is it is specifically focused on what behaviors users have in relation to our product or service. What does this mean? We are not going to analyze people as a whole, we are going to isolate one specific feature: What are the behavioral patterns of our users? How often do they buy this product or service? Are they going to prioritize price or speed? How relevant is this product or service in the life of the user? What feature of the product do they value the most?
The image below is an example of a Behavioral Archetype output. In this case, bank clients were grouped depending on how much support they sought from their financial advisor. It doesn't matter their gender, age, or family composition. What matters is what they are seeking as a service from the Bank. It focuses on one aspect of their behavior, the one that really matters for the study objective in order to find insights.
Overview of the different approaches through a sketch
The image below is a sketch I made to illustrate what the output of each framework looks like and what they bring to the table. How this tool is received by teams working on User Research.
1.Market Segmentation based on sociodemographic characteristics which I think it puts people into boxes categorizing, reducing them into numbers from static attributes that make us miss their real needs.
2.User Personas that include a full bio that tends to bring too much unnecessary complexity and usually filled with specifications are just made-up details.
3.Behavioral Archetypes that isolate one key aspect of the person´s behavior. It zooms in to completely understand their needs and desires around that one aspect that we are studying (for example behaviors towards grocery shopping or transportation preferences and needs).
Why Behavioral Archetypes instead of User Personas?
I believe the User Personas tool is both the best and worst that happened to Design Thinking. On the one hand, it brought a more empathetic approach and helped synthesize lots of information in a compelling way. This allowed designers to bring data alive into project discussions in a vivid and captivating way. On the other hand, this profiling that had a 360° overview included so many attributes that many times ends up bringing more confusion instead of facilitating the innovation process.
All in all, I prefer and recommend using the Behavioral Archetypes approach for User Research because:
1/ It helps us gain focus on the study objective by eliminating all the unnecessary information.
2/ The research is based on behavioral observation rather than guessing or making up bios to empathize with the users.
3/ It provides a practical behavioral matrix (or positioning line like the one on the image above) that helps during strategic decision-making.
