1.
Personas are often not created for their original intent. They are built in siloes without a defined goal or purpose, kept static across time and use cases, not flexible and adaptable, and, grounded in artifacts product teams/designers can’t use.
The more “human” we try to make them by adding specific personality traits and details about his habits, the more we unconsciously stereotype people. This is dangerous.
As we move toward building intelligent, responsive systems, we need new tools that further embrace diversity and respect multiple contexts and capabilities.
2.
We need tools that reintroduce diversity into our design process. Every decision we make either raises or lowers barriers to participation in society.Inclusive design emphasizes our responsibility to solve for mismatches between humans and their products, environments, and social structures. We need ways to check, balance, and measure the inclusivity of our designs.
At Microsoft, my team and I created a tool called the persona spectrum. This repeatable tool uses power of personas to ground and humanize user insight while keeping different human attributes distinct. By designing along a spectrum of need and motivation, we avoid the biases and assumptions built into a persona. We design for a diverse range of real users instead of one average, theoretical human. Read more here.