I am not the persona, and the persona is not me.

As a grad student learning about design research and creating user models, I am finding, to my dismay, that there are many conflicting messages about creating personas. When I was first introduced to them, I was under the impression that we could create a reliable fake person after some in person observation of an experience and some secondary research. The person could be based off of characteristics of real users that we saw, and also trends surrounding the arena of the experience. This always felt pretty subjective to me, so I never felt comfortable creating a persona for a user journey I was constructing. My feelings were validated recently after reading many “how to” articles on user models. The writers said that personas will not be helpful to the project unless they are completely rooted in unbiased, primary research. Hearing the words “primary research” always makes my inner biologist self happy (she is confused and often frustrated by design, it’s a work in progress). I should have expected, however, to receive a total opposite opinion the next day, when in my co-design class, the professors told us that we will need to make some assumptions about the community we are trying to serve, or else we will be at a stand-still trying to understand them fully, and not take any steps forward. What we should not assume, is the end-product, and that is where we can let the stakeholders lead. I can see merit in both of these polar opposite takes on personas, and that’s where I get stuck.

These multiple opinions about creating user models naturally leads me to believe that this is not an airtight technique. However, even with different methods of construction, the main intention behind the creation of a persona is to help fully direct the attention to the users, and away from the feelings of the designer. Designers need to attempt to stand in the shoes of the people they are serving, and separate themselves from their preconceived notions or preferences, to create solutions that will work well for the users. But in order to create a solution that works for the users, the persona has to be reflective of users’ needs and wants. This is where it gets tricky. We have to do research to make a persona anywhere near accurate, but we run the risk of making our model too absolute. Since a model is only realistic, not real, we can’t adjust for people’s emotions, or previous mental models they have developed. We can only hope that people with common and like-minded characteristics will perform in similar ways in an experience. But the good thing about making a model is the fact we are taking any of these characteristics into consideration in the first place. We are taking steps closer to understanding how our users see the world, and designing for what they could possibly need.

It is very hard as a designer to separate our wants and needs from the users. Even if we do base our personas completely on data, the fact that we as humans are choosing what characteristics to put together into a representative person means that we are influencing the outcome in some way. This is can be especially problematic when creating personas that represent users that don’t share the same race as we do, or that come from a completely different lifestyle than we are used to. As a white woman, I would feel horrible if I created a persona representing black men that was influenced at all by my worldview, especially if I had to make assumptions about their feelings or actions. Though I am still navigating this challenge as a designer, the first step I can take to making my persona serve its representative population to its fullest potential is to make connections with people in that population, and experience parts of their lives with them. Understand their culture by being immersed in their culture. Have real and open conversations with them, and trust their assumptions more than my own. These steps sound easy on paper, but this will be a challenge for every designer. Despite the challenge, it is a necessary action that I will need to get practice doing, because as a designer, I owe all of humanity my best work, not just the people most like me.

So long story short, the method of creating a persona is a work in progress for me, but what is really important is having the mindset of serving my users in the best way possible by separating my worldview from theirs, and trying to get the best picture of their needs and how they would benefit from my project. Now that’s a mindset even my inner biologist can get behind.

Amy Zasadzinski