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Transcending gender identity in user personas

Open up to broader societal definitions of persons.

Eva Schicker
UX Collective
Details of a persona rendering. (Travel icon by Nikita Kozin from the Noun Project.)
Details of a persona rendering. (Travel icon by Nikita Kozin from the Noun Project.)

User personas, used in UX, scripts, and stories in general, thrive on personal, distinctive details. The person’s attributes, goals, pain points, and personality are weighed heavily towards actual data research conforming to a brand’s offering or story’s narrative. The more we know about our user, the better we can formulate an experience for our perfect customer or participant.

Exact data mining is particularly important, for instance, if we design a user journey for a member of the women’s national skiing team about to enter the Olympics, or a retired male city dweller with dietary restriction looking to engage in a local meal prep program. The more we know the better. The more detailed the user persona, the better the product.

However…

What if these distinctions based on gender, age, demographics or family status are no longer the main focus? What if we need to broaden our UX panorama to be more inclusive, more communal, more non-judgemental?

The question arises thus:

How can we compose a user persona which speaks to broader definitions of an organization’s participant or a product’s…

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