Should we stop using personas?

Here’s what I learned.

Persona is a tool that has been debated for a while in the design community. After trying it for a few times at work (didn’t go well), I’ve been interested in whether or not to use personas. If so, how to use them to actually bring values to product and business?

Since then, I read a number of articles and attended events that talked about personas. This article is a summary of what I learned.

All the stock photos that we use over these years ;)

First off, what problems are personas supposed to solve?

Personas are created to build a shared understanding of users throughout the design process. By helping designers and stakeholders identify what’s valuable for users, they could help business prioritize resources and make better decisions in general.

Why do personas fail?

Many of us have seen personas created. However, most of the time no one uses them (or sees them ever again). Why is that? Personas are usually created in a silo. Stakeholders who should be using them aren’t involved in the process at all. Therefore, stakeholders never understand what they are, why they’re useful and how they could use them. Even the designers who created them never refer to them in meetings. In sum, one of the key reason why personas fail is…