How to Create Personas That Works
Why Most Personas Don’t Work (And How to Fix Them)
What exactly is a persona? At its core, a persona is a fictional yet research-based representation of your user, designed to help your team empathize with and design for them.
Here’s the problem: most personas fail. Why? Because they’re often generic, aspirational, or disconnected from reality. This leads to misaligned design decisions and frustration for teams and users alike.
Let’s dive into what makes bad personas fail—and how to fix them with actionable, research-backed strategies.
Feeling like personas and journey maps aren’t working for your team?
Try the Scenario Alignment Canvas (SAC) instead. The SAC focuses on aligning your team around a user doing a thing, aka a scenario, rather than generic personas.
In her latest video, Jen Blatz from BlatzChatz explains how to use this innovative canvas to:
Simplify kickoff meetings.
Foster team alignment.
Focus on real user behaviors and goals.
Check out her walkthrough here:
👉 Brought to you by BlatzChatz
Today’s Highlights
Key Insight: Why Most Personas Don’t Work (And How to Fix Them)
What Is a Persona?
The Problem With Traditional Personas
The Ingredients of a Useful Persona
Actionable Personas vs. Aspirational Personas
UXU Community Spotlight: Persona analysis
Practical Tips: How to Test the Effectiveness of Your Personas
UXCON’25: Early-bird tickets available!
Job Board: Fresh UX Roles
Resource Corner: Tools and Reads to Create Better Personas
Tool of the Week
Key Insight: Why Most Personas Don’t Work (And How to Fix Them)
Personas are supposed to help your team design better products, but they often fail due to three key issues:
They’re Too Generic:
“Sarah, a 35-year-old marketer who loves coffee” is not helpful. Personas need depth and specificity tied to user behaviors and needs.They Rely on Assumptions:
Personas created in brainstorming sessions without research often don’t represent real users.They Ignore Context:
Knowing that Sarah is “goal-oriented” doesn’t help when trying to solve her frustration with clunky workflows.
What Is a Persona?
A persona is a snapshot of your user, combining their:
Behaviors: What actions do they take and why?
Pain Points: What frustrates them?
Goals: What are they trying to achieve?
Effective personas are more than just demographic profiles; they’re tools for decision-making.
The Problem With Traditional Personas
Most personas fall short because they focus too much on irrelevant details or lack actionable insights. Examples:
Demographic Overload: Information like age, gender, or job title can be irrelevant unless it impacts user behavior.
Abstract Goals: “Wants innovation” is too vague to inform real decisions.
Stagnant Representations: Users evolve, and your personas should too.
The Ingredients of a Useful Persona
To fix your personas, ensure they are:
Behavior-Focused:
Highlight workflows and pain points instead of irrelevant traits. Example:BAD: “Sarah loves tech.”
GOOD: “Sarah struggles with managing multiple apps for her workflow.”
Data-Driven:
Use interviews, analytics, and surveys to ground personas in reality.Scenario-Specific:
Personas should reflect user goals within a specific context. Avoid trying to cover every possible scenario with one persona.
Actionable Personas vs. Aspirational Personas
Aspirational Personas:
“Sarah values efficiency.”
Why it fails: It doesn’t provide enough actionable insights.
Actionable Personas:
“Sarah frequently abandons apps with overly complex workflows and prefers simple tools for collaboration.”
Why it works: It directly connects to user behavior and informs feature priorities.
UXU Community Spotlight: Persona analysis
This persona is a solid example of a well-crafted user profile.
What Works (and Why):
Clear Goals:
Marie wants to sell her art and gain exposure.
Why it Works: These are specific, measurable goals that align directly with potential features or services, making it easy to design solutions.Humanized Details:
Personal elements like her age, location, and income make her relatable and easy to empathize with.
Why it Works: It allows designers to picture a real person with specific struggles and aspirations, making the design process more user-centered.
What Could Be Better:
Prioritize Pain Points:
The persona lists many challenges, but it doesn’t clarify which are most urgent.
Why it Matters: Addressing high-impact issues first ensures the design delivers immediate value.Add Emotional Insights:
The persona focuses on financial concerns but lacks depth about why Marie creates art.
Why it Matters: Understanding emotional motivations helps design solutions that connect on a deeper level.
Takeaway:
This persona works because it’s actionable and relatable, but prioritizing pain points and adding emotional insights could make it even more effective.
To help you in this essential task, we’ve crafted a User Persona Template that guides you through the process of collecting and organizing the right data.
Practical Tips: How to Test the Effectiveness of Your Personas
Ask yourself these questions:
Do They Reflect Real Data?
Personas based on assumptions will fail to guide decisions.Do They Drive Decision-Making?
A good persona should help your team prioritize features or workflows.Are They Specific?
If your persona could apply to multiple unrelated products, it’s too generic.
UXCON '25 Early-Bird Tickets Are Live! 🚀
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Senior User Experience Designer
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Resource Corner: Tools and Reads to Create Better Personas
Book: UX Strategy by Jaime Levy – Learn how to use personas strategically to
align teams and solve user problems.
Article: Personas Study Guide by NN Group – A step-by-step guide to persona creation.
Mini-Course: Personas Vs Archetypes: A hands-on workshop led by Yao Adantor
Tool of the Week: Make My Persona by HubSpot
Need a quick, guided way to create a persona? Make My Persona by HubSpot is a simple tool for building user personas in minutes.
Here’s how it works:
Answer guided questions about your users.
Generate a professional persona PDF.
Adjust and refine it as your research evolves.
Final Note | Stop Using Bad Personas
If your personas aren’t driving better decisions, it’s time to rethink them. Focus on behaviors over demographics, test their relevance, and use them as a tool to solve real user problems—not just a box to check off.
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