A website utilizes a machine learning algorithm to create realistic human faces, allowing users to explore the possibilities of digital art and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence algorithms take existing portraits and recompose them to generate novel, realistic-looking human facial features. Recently, we came across a LinkedIn post claiming that this platform can be useful “if you’re building a personal brand and looking for a profile picture.”
We concur that computer-generated faces might perfectly replicate certain personas – but, paradoxically, they may not necessarily mirror our initial assumptions. The website wryly emphasizes the fundamental flaws inherent in this ubiquitous design approach. Personas, like digital images, are constructed entities designed to convey a specific message or identity. Data is abstracted from its original context and recontextualized into a distant representation that bears little resemblance to reality.
While seemingly effective in its own right, designers often employ personas to inform and refine their designs for real-world applications.
Personas: A step again
Designers have likely encountered, utilized, or crafted personas at some point in their careers. According to the Interplay Design Basis’s article ” “, personas are fictional characters created based on analysis to represent various consumer types that may use a service, product, website, or brand. In their most comprehensive form, personas can comprise a name, profile picture, quotes, demographics, objectives, desires, habits related to a specific service or product, emotions, and motivations, as exemplified by Artistic Companion’s detailed profiles. According to Designit, a design company, the objective of personas is to render complex analysis more relatable, simplifying it for seamless discussion, comprehension, referencing, and practical application in product and service enhancements.
The decontextualization of personas
By creating fictional characters with distinct personalities and experiences, personas bring dry analysis data to life, making complex information more accessible and engaging. Despite its utility, this methodology inherently limits the researcher’s ability to evaluate knowledge accurately, as it removes the studied customers from their unique and context-dependent situations? Therefore, poorly defined personas fail to convey crucial characteristics that enable you to understand their thought processes or connect with customers’ mindsets and behaviors; as a result, they fall short. One perceives that the persona did something, though lacking sufficient context to comprehend their actions. You encounter face-to-face interactions with genuine humans, rather than merely representing customer profiles.
This decontextualization of personas is evident through four distinct methods, to be explored below.
Personas assume persons are static
Although some companies still try to fit their employees and candidates into outdated personality molds, the stark truth remains: individuals cannot be reduced to a fixed set of characteristics. You behave, imagine, and genuinely experience in a distinct manner contingent upon the circumstances you encounter. You appear to possess a multifaceted personality, presenting a distinct demeanor towards various people – perhaps amiable to some and robust with others. You periodically reevaluate and reconsider the choices you’ve made.
While individual behavior often follows predictable patterns, the interplay between personal background and environmental context is what ultimately influences decision-making and action selection. As the intricate tapestry of context unfolds – encompassing the setting, the distinct personas, and the ebb and flow of one’s temperament – the cumulative impact of historical events and personal experiences shapes us into unique individuals, moment by moment.
The notion that personas overlook the inherent complexity of real people by presenting them as fixed, one-dimensional profiles, failing to account for individual differences and variability. Characters can hijack people’s lives, whisking them away from reality. Moreover, individuals are reduced to a narrow label, pigeonholed into categories such as “that sort of person”, effectively stifling their natural capacity for adaptability. This simplistic statement perpetuates harmful biases, narrows perspectives, and starkly contrasts with reality?
People don’t pay attention to their surroundings; they focus on others.
In reality, designers are crafting solutions for specific contexts, not individuals. Each individual inhabits a unique household, comprising various ecosystems where environmental, political, and social factors converge, warranting thoughtful consideration. A design is intended to resonate with multiple users, transcending individual preferences. Effective, we craft solutions for diverse scenarios where numerous users might employ the product. While personas may provide some insight into the consumer’s behavior, they often fail to capture the nuances of how that individual relates to their environment.
Are you sure that’s a consistent decision every time? Despite being a dedicated vegan, you’ve decided to make an exception and buy some meat for the occasion when your family comes over. While dependent on distinct circumstances and parameters, your choices and customs, as well as views and declarations, cannot be considered definitive but will be profoundly situation-specific. Without considering the underlying context or dependencies, the persona would overlook crucial information that shapes their decisions. You choose to behave in certain ways because they have been instilled in you through your upbringing and life experiences, shaping who you are today. People often exhibit the common cognitive bias known as: attributing others’ behavior to their character rather than the situation, while failing to consider the context in which the actions took place.
In line with the Interplay Design Foundation, personas are typically situated within a scenario that’s a “distinct context with an issue they need to resolve”—but does that necessarily mean context is thoroughly considered? Regrettably, the tendency is to extrapolate from fictional characters’ behaviors, using their reactions as a basis for resolving specific situations. It’s worsened by the fact that you haven’t thoroughly examined and grasped the context of the people your character is meant to represent, leaving you uncertain about how they would behave in various situations.
Personas are meaningless averages
As discussed in Shlomo Goltz’s work, “a persona represents a hypothetical individual, yet is not an actual person; rather, it’s synthesized from observations of many individuals.” A prominent criticism of this aspect of personas is that, as per the example of the USA Air Force designing planes based on the average of 140 pilots’ physical dimensions and no single pilot actually fitting within those parameters.
Psychological limitations apply uniformly across all individuals. It’s often said that nothing gets under our skin like someone taking our words out of context. The celebrity claimed they borrowed my phrasing, but made no such inference explicit. A news article documented their statement, although it neglected to provide crucial context surrounding the claim and omitted any descriptions of accompanying nonverbal cues. The intended implication was misconstrued. When creating personas, you consistently capture individuals’ assertions, purposes, wants, and emotions without considering their specific context, then interpret them as isolated findings.
By abstracting discoveries from various individuals, personas take it a step further by seamlessly integrating them into their own knowledge framework, regardless of context. Without a deep understanding of the underlying drivers, the subsequent discoveries often appear confusing and inconsistent, lacking the essential context that would make them meaningful and logical. It lacks . Without delving into the exhaustive background, it is crucial to explore each individual’s unprocessed information to gain a deeper understanding. The utility of this character lies in its ability to facilitate a deeper understanding of human nature.
The seeming relatability of personas is a deceptive phenomenon.
While designers are aware that personas can be ubiquitous. Designers endeavour to overcome this challenge by imbuing personas with relatable details that humanise their characteristics, rendering them more authentic and endearing. The inherent paradox of game design is aptly summed up by Interplay’s candid observation: “Introduce fabricated personal details to render the character plausible.” This quixotic approach, which injects a dash of unreality for the sake of authenticity, perfectly encapsulates the contradictions of creating virtual identities. You deliberately cloud the fact that “John Doe” represents a distilled encapsulation of analytical insights; yet, wouldn’t it be significantly more transparent to acknowledge that John is merely an abstraction? If something is synthetic, let’s clearly label it as such.
Designers deceptively elevate personas’ characteristics out of context, disregarding the crucial role of setting in shaping individuality, then obscure meaning through isolated, non-transferable research findings, and finally contrive their own context to craft novel implications. By crafting their content, individuals inadvertently inject a multitude of biases. As designers at Designit, we contextualise personas primarily drawing upon our collective knowledge and experience. We foster connections that deviate significantly from reality, reinforcing harmful stereotypes and further distancing ourselves from the intricacies of human experience with each new addition.
To conduct effective design analysis, it is crucial to present findings in a factual “as-is” manner, thereby enabling viewers to empathize and form their own unique interpretations and emotional connections.
What lies beneath our multiple personalities?
What happens when our best-laid plans and user research fall short, leaving us without clear answers about how users will behave or react?
Designit proposes leveraging scenarios as an alternative to traditional personas. Every mindset represents a complex spectrum of attitudes and emotional responses that can vary significantly among different individuals within the same context or life experience, prompting designers to adopt a nuanced understanding rather than getting fixated on a solitary perspective. While acknowledging the importance of individual actions as a step towards change, it is crucial to recognize that people’s characters, habits, and mindsets are deeply rooted in the environment they inhabit. While mindsets may initially appear fixed, they can indeed shift and adapt according to the circumstances. What underlies a resilient mindset is a complex interplay of factors, including self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and cognitive flexibility. It involves cultivating a growth-oriented attitude, embracing imperfection, and developing the ability to reframe challenges as opportunities for growth.
Margaret P., author of the article “_______”, proposes redefining personas to include a range of consumer skills and abilities. A visible impairment can manifest as an enduring condition (such as blindness), a temporary state following medical intervention (e.g., post-operative recovery from eye surgery), or a situational limitation caused by environmental factors (like display glare). Persona spectra are highly effective tools for fostering inclusivity and informing design, as they rely on the notion that context, rather than character, serves as the foundation for creative expression. While AI-powered customer service tools have limitations, their inability to truly connect with customers stems from their lack of relatability to individual experiences within a diverse human spectrum.
As a means of offering an alternative to traditional personas, our aim is to revamp the typical design process by making it context-driven. Contexts exhibit generalized patterns that can be established, just as we attempted to identify individual patterns earlier. By rigorously examining existing data sets, identifying key variables and correlations, and implementing machine learning algorithms to recognize trends and relationships. To ensure a genuinely context-based design, we must first immerse ourselves in the users’ world and understand their needs, motivations, and pain points. This involves conducting extensive research through ethnographic studies, interviews, and surveys to gather rich insights about the target audience’s behaviors, habits, and environments.
Encounter individuals in various settings.
Reality itself is eerily relatable and thought-provoking. Since subsequently, we must grasp the complexities of real individuals within their multifaceted environments, and leverage this insight to inform our design decisions? We employ this tactic as expected.
Let’s examine the underlying strategy by looking at a specific case study of how one of us applied it in a recent project investigating the daily routines and energy consumption behaviors of Italians. We developed a comprehensive design analysis plan focused on exploring people’s perceptions of energy consumption and sustainable behaviors, with a specific emphasis on high-performance thermostats.
1. Select the precise pattern
When we argue against personas, we’re often confronted with concerns such as “Where can you find a single individual who embodies all the characteristics of one of these ideal personas?” The response is straightforward: You don’t need detailed knowledge of many individuals for your insights to be profound and meaningful.
Validity in qualitative research stems not from quantity but rather from the correctness of the sampling approach. Choose symbols that most effectively represent the individuals you’re creating for? By selecting this pattern thoughtfully and gaining a profound understanding of the sampled individuals, you can reasonably infer the thoughts and behaviors of the broader population. There’s little point in reviewing seven Susans and five Yuriys – one of each would suffice.
Similarly, one wouldn’t wish to acquaint oneself with Susan across 15 distinct scenarios? As one has observed Susan across diverse situations, they have discerned the underlying pattern of her responses to disparate contexts. Here is the rewritten text:
How does Susan respond, genuinely react, and intuitively perceive herself within the context of various situations?
As each individual serves as a representative of their respective segment of the total population under investigation, it becomes evident that every participant should be treated as a distinct entity, reflecting the inherent complexity of being an abstracted summary of a larger collective in similar settings? Stop perpetuating unnecessary complexity! To grasp the inherent complexities of these select few, it is essential to comprehensively understand and validate their unique expressions within their respective spheres of influence, while acknowledging that establishing patterns may require examining recurring themes across various contexts.
When selecting a consulting pattern, consider what kind of expertise you need to overcome your business challenge. Before commencing design efforts, it is essential to identify your intended audience, considering factors such as the corporation’s strategic goals, existing customer demographics, and potential future target markets.
During our instance challenge, we developed an application for homeowners with smart thermostats. Eventually, everyone will probably own a smart thermostat for their home. Currently, however, it appears that this technology is only suitable for early adopters on a personal level. What drove these pioneering customers to scale their adoption of this innovation? Given that we wanted to understand why certain individuals possessed smart thermostats and how they acquired them, we conducted interviews to gather this information. Some individuals had to buy it for themselves, while others had acquired it through the generosity of others or had inherited it from their own homes. We selected representatives from diverse age groups and geographic locations, balancing the representation of both tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy participants to ensure a broad range of perspectives.
2. Conduct your analysis
Conduct an in-depth analysis of the selected pattern, leveraging ethnographic methods to gain a nuanced understanding of its characteristics. Your proficiency in qualitative research will flourish with a wealth of anecdotes and illustrative examples. Given the constraints posed by COVID-19, we repurposed our in-house ethnographic investigation to a remote, phone-based interview process conducted within participants’ homes, supplemented by diaries kept during the study period.
To gain a profound comprehension of household members’ attitudes and decision-making trade-offs, the research scope extended beyond the individual interviewee, deliberately incorporating the entire family unit into the analysis. Each interviewee’s story initially unfolds as they recount their experiences, but it soon takes on a more dynamic and precise form as spouses, children, or even pets contribute additional details and corrections. Moreover, we focused on the dynamics of connections with various influential people – including colleagues or distant family members – and explored how those relationships shaped their associated behaviors. The comprehensive examination enabled us to construct a richly detailed portrayal of the complex scenario, featuring a multitude of individuals involved in dynamic interplay.
The analytical scope must remain sufficiently broad to encompass all possible actors. Consequently, it typically yields better results to define overarching research themes using macro-level inquiry. Semi-structured interviews are ideally arranged to allow for follow-up questions that delve deeper into topics discussed spontaneously by the interviewee. This open-minded approach, dubbed a “plan to be stunned,” is poised to deliver the most profound and thought-provoking insights. Our contributor humorously reported that when asked about household temperature regulation, his spouse substituted the thermostat’s app with WhatsApp. When she intends to turn on the heater but won’t be present, she’ll send me a text.
3. Evaluation: Create the Dynamic Selves
Through in-depth analysis and evaluation, individuals are represented by their complex dynamic selves, comprising multiple contextual “Selves” that emerge from the various situations investigated. At the heart of each Dynamic Self profile lies a thought-provoking quote, beautifully paired with a striking photograph and insightful demographic details that provide a nuanced understanding of its significance. The analysis findings will reveal which demographics are significantly correlated with indicating. Our investigation focused on understanding the lifestyle of households, particularly their thermal regulation preferences, by examining key demographic factors including household type, size, composition, financial situation, and level of technological adoption. To provide a more personalized experience for our users, we added optional attributes such as name and age for each individual. This allows stakeholders to easily link multiple actions and contexts to the same person, facilitating a seamless transition from personas.
To accurately capture exact quotes, it is crucial to record interviews on video and take detailed notes as thoroughly as possible. It is crucial to the veracity of multiple Selves within each individual that participate. In actual ethnographic research, vivid depictions of the setting and anonymous portraits of participants are crucial for crafting authentic portrayals of individuals. While area-specific images are ideal, a consultant image that is lifelike and depicts significant actions related to your contributors can also be effective. One of our interviewees shared with us a fond memory of his mountain home, where he would often spend weekends with his family. Following this, we depicted him scaling mountains alongside his young daughter.
Following the comprehensive analysis evaluation, we presented all the Selves’ key indicators in a cohesive format, organized into action-based categories on a single visual platform. Cards displayed scenarios, each featuring a thought-provoking quote paired with a novel photograph that brought the narrative to life. Each contributor possessed a unique array of cards that revealed aspects of their personal lives.
4. Establish design alternatives
Upon compiling the most pivotal quotes from the interview transcripts and diaries into a comprehensive deck of “Self” cards, it becomes apparent that distinct patterns begin to materialize. These patterns will illuminate novel product development, innovative capabilities, and emerging enterprises – driving cutting-edge design forward.
During our instance challenge, a striking notion about humidity gained widespread attention. Individuals often lack a fundamental understanding of humidity, its significance, and the consequences of inadequate monitoring; settings that are either excessively arid or humid can precipitate respiratory complications or exacerbate existing conditions. This highlighting presents a significant opportunity for our consumers to train customers on this concept and transition into wellness advisors.
Advantages of Dynamic Selves
Utilizing the Dynamic Selves strategy in analysis, one uncovers distinct social relationships, unique circumstances confronting individual actors, and the actions they undertake, all set against a backdrop of shifting environments that surround them. As part of our thermostat challenge, we’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Davide, a multifaceted individual who excels as both a dedicated partner, an animal enthusiast, and a technology aficionado.
While Davide embodies the archetype of a “tech fanatic,” individuals with similar passions can be found across various demographic profiles – from those with substantial means to others living on modest incomes, and regardless of whether they’re part of a household or flying solo. Their motivations and priorities for purchasing a brand-new thermostat may be inversely correlated with these distinct value frameworks.
Once you’ve thoroughly grasped Davide’s behavioral patterns under various circumstances, and gained a profound understanding of the underlying drivers behind each habit, you’re well-equipped to extrapolate and predict how he would likely react in another comparable situation. By leveraging your comprehension of his thought processes and behaviors, you should predict how he would react and act in various hypothetical scenarios you create.
The Dynamic Selves strategy seeks to reconcile the conflicting dual function of personas by simultaneously summarizing and empathizing, which is achieved by decoupling your analytical abstraction from the individuals you wish to empathize with. The notion that empathy is amplified in proportion to the size of the collective: this phenomenon stems from our innate capacity to resonate with individuals, which becomes exponentially stronger when shared among a greater number of people. Don’t we often feel a profound sense of connection with individuals whose life experiences resonate deeply with our own?
When drawing inspiration from a specific individual, you shouldn’t feel obligated to craft a completely fabricated persona. None of these unnecessary embellishments are called for? In reality, their demeanor mirrors that of this individual. In the realm of expertise, personas often morph into mere reputations on prototype screens, a reality acknowledged by all, as these characters, in truth, never truly exist.
The Dynamic Selves approach also significantly increases the accountability of one’s work, as the consequences of mistakes are tangible and personally felt, having a direct impact on someone known and respected by the team. It would cease you from taking shortcuts and ensure that you conduct thorough checks in your designs.
Individuals with unique experiences and perspectives become the bedrock for effective anecdotal storytelling, rendering them more convincing and relatable in their respective contexts. Accurate documentation of the analytical process is crucial for achieving this desired outcome. The notion that Alessandra’s workspace conveyed a palpable sense of gravity and pressing importance to her design decisions once struck me deeply. Stagnant workspaces often harbor noise, unhealthy ergonomics, and a dearth of natural sunlight – familiar foes to productivity. By pursuing this course of action, we risk introducing unnecessary complications into her already intricate existence.
Designit notes that their article on Mindsets suggests that “design pondering instruments” offer a shortcut to tackling reality’s complexities; however, this method of simplification can often reduce individuals’ lives to just a few basic traits. Unfortunately, personas have been complicit in the crime of oversimplification. The simplistic approach of these symbols fails to capture the intricacies of customer decision-making, neglecting the reality that individuals operate within complex contexts.
Design craves nuanced simplicity without losing its complexity. Take a moment to review the analysis components that caught your attention: the sentences that resonated with you, the photographs that stuck with you, and the sounds that persisted. Describing specific individuals through artworks that highlight their distinct qualities in various settings? While insights and observations from others are indeed rooted in context, they cannot be reduced to merely that context alone, lest the meaning and significance be lost.
It’s long overdue for design to bid farewell to fantasy and instead find solace in the raw, unpredictable beauty of reality – a realm where complexity, chaos, and wonder converge to inform and inspire us.
