Are photos of your personas making them worse?
Have you ever read a story and made up what the person looks like in your head? I do, and I hope you do too so I feel less weird.
You’ve probably made, worked with, or heard of personas before. They’re profiles us UX people put together based on our research to represent certain types of users with similar behaviours, needs, expectations, use of technology, what they do online, etc.
It’ll also almost always have picture of the persona, and while I totally get that it looks nice, I think it has huge potential to be misleading, and may even perpetuate stereotypes. Here’s why…
- Pictures can’t really show the kinds of information you need to make decisions about design and product features.
- There’s a chance people will judge them by how they look and get it wrong.
These assumptions may not only be distracting from the true persona, they can be pretty judgy. Let’s leave ethics to the side for a moment, though, and just focus on the business case.
Understanding the people you’re trying to connect with is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. And if the persona doesn’t help you do that — or if it steers you away from that — it’s not a good persona.
Good personas are based on behavioural information. Photos are based on demographics, and that really has little bearing on making design decisions.
Take a look at these personas from Mailchimp.
The problem is you can’t really use much of it to make any kind of decision. Cool? Smart? What does that mean? Control freak is kinda useful. Another says “savvy”, and I’d rather know that about all of them, what devices they use, experiences, or responsibilities, but these provide little useful information for designing Mailchimp products. But I know Mailchimp is great, so these are surely just for show, the tip of the iceberg if the iceberg has UX stuff on it.
Mailchimp is of course not alone. Almost every persona I’ve come across has a photo. This is just a snapshot from an image search for user persona.
Tell me you haven’t seen this at least once
CEO of a large corporation? Old white male. Receptionist or assistant? Young female. Is old supposed to mean they’re not good with computers? Often yes. We all know that’s not super fair and it’s not necessarily true. It fits what we expect though, doesn't it? That’s just what I was doing when this dawned on me. Like everyone else I had the best intentions. But if these characteristics are important then write it out. A good persona shouldn’t rely on a picture to convey anything.
Then why do we use the photos?
I think because it looks nice, and it feels complete. A nice photo makes it seem like we can get to know our audience more personally, and it makes a bunch of boring old words look cooler. It even feels more strategically impressive. You’ve not only described your target, you’ve found them! Hell, without overthinking it like I’m doing now, it seems kind of crazy to leave out the photo.
But who are we getting to know, exactly? A slice of that segment? Someone you see and think “Oh it’s that kind of person”?
C’mon, did you not see those hella cool personas Mailchimp made though?Stop it Ian, focus. Ok…
What’s the picture doing if it’s not adding value? Well, not adding value would be okay, but I do think it can actually remove value by misleading people into considering the wrong things. Even giving your persona a name could impart a gender and perhaps a cultural bias that may skew our judgement. It’s tempting. Don’t design the truth out of it.
So now what?
Try ditching the photo and see what happens. When everyone asks why, tell them that you think it might be better without it, so we don’t get any preconceived notions and miss important business things. Focus on describing the persona well, so that you could go out and find those people — not by looking at them, but matching them to the right characteristics. And when they say do it anyway so the deck looks better for the client…
We don’t need to get rid of the visuals totally. Try just using an icon or even more interesting, what about a big group of people? Give the persona a title like “the unsure consumer”. Try to accept a beautiful persona for what insight it contains on the inside, not how it looks on the outside.
