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When your vision is blurred by deadlines and efficiency, a persona can remind you of your original purpose.

Personas are here to remind designers that they are designing for people—not just consumers. My opinion on this statement is mainly negative (as discussed in my previous article), but I believe that for designers working in big industries who must deliver huge amounts of work quickly, it serves as an important anchor.

There is often little time for UX or emotional design. With a high rhythm, your deadline is probably eating away at your attention to users.

Thus, having a cheat sheet—used carefully—will help. It reminds you that, above all, you are designing something for a public. Satisfying this public must be your first motivation, not the stress of your upcoming deadline or your boss asking for progress. Easy to say, and not always relevant, I am aware.

Specific products for specific people

Your product is for a large spectrum of users, not stereotyped personalities—except if it is designed for only specific people.

This is where personas show their full potential. As I said previously, personas tend to make us see our users as 3 to 5 different personalities (so five different uses and expectations), which is totally false and reductive. Unless it is for a specific product.

Indeed, while designing a specific product with a special context of use, it is priceless to have a list of these specificities from your user’s perspective.

Example: Designing for constraints

Let’s take an example: a website which helps people suffering from color blindness. It is obvious that you have to design it for color-blind people; it would be unfortunate to forget this primordial need.

That is an easy case because there is only one restriction. Now, imagine designing a UI for a machine which must manage people coming into a hospital. It must guide them to where they are supposed to be for their appointments or medical consultations.

It seems pretty simple at first sight, but do not forget that you are designing for a hospital. Your users are susceptible to diseases or handicaps. You have to take all of these kinds into consideration while working. There are plenty of inherent variables, so you will not be able to design for every case, but you have to do it for as many as you can.

A persona will be helpful here, because you will probably forget something, or simply because a designer does not have knowledge on everything. That is totally fine; personas are here to help you on that point. Nicely done, they will give you the knowledge you need to build a UI for every kind of person.

Keep an eye on your persona, not both

It is important to not take everything as granted in personas. The designer keeps the responsibility of their product; they should not rest on personas.

This is the main flaw of personas, and it does not stem from them—it comes from designers who rely on them too heavily. Statistics given by personas should not be taken as raw truth; people described in them do not even exist most of the time.

They should be considered as reminders, as a post-it telling you some information that you cannot always keep in your mind. They just display directions; they are not detailed road maps which must be read meticulously (for most common projects).

Obviously, the more your product is built for a specific public, the more your personas should be detailed—and they might definitely turn into road maps at a point.

Conclusion

Personas are made to evolve and adapt. They should not stay generic sheets, otherwise they will turn your project into a generic project.

Screw the rules of personas. Build them in order to take the best from them. They have to shape into what you need, not the opposite.