Personas are primarily a mapping tool for providing the team with a library of potential users, their background and needs with relation to your product and to which the team can design up against. They fail (at being useful) because they often have very little to do with the actual user's situations.
A better way IMO is to use customer support to figure out who your users actually are or go and speak with your users and learn what they actually want.
We never recommend doing them unless a project needs a lot of documentation for a lot of switching hands and you are worried that some of the insights might be lost on new team members.
As a design tool they aren't really that helpful for anything.
A better way IMO is to use customer support to figure out who your users actually are or go and speak with your users and learn what they actually want.
We never recommend doing them unless a project needs a lot of documentation for a lot of switching hands and you are worried that some of the insights might be lost on new team members.
As a design tool they aren't really that helpful for anything.