Personas vs Archetypes — why not both?

This blog was originally published on Medium in 2015.

In his post “Archetypes not Personas” (An old one I know, but I felt compelled to respond!), Paul Farino argues that:

“ … while embarking on discovery research for a User Experience … archetypes are a better, more accurate model than personas.”

While I agree with his reasoning on the importance of archetypes to the design process, I fail to understand his reasoning for discounting personas. His criticism of personas (that they are often created in a vacuum and make assumptions about users based on very little insight) are rather criticisms of bad personas.

There is more than enough room in the UX world for personas, archetypes and (not mentioned by Paul, but equally important), user segments. Let me go into a little more detail about each, and why they all have a role to play.

User segments

Creating user segments involves dividing your user base into groups of similar users, usually based on demographic information or particular characteristics. They can be as simple as “females under 20” or as detailed as “users with low financial literacy and high levels of debt located in the Auckland area.” Segments are useful for getting a high level overview of who your users are, and for reaching some very general conclusions about their behaviours and characteristics.

Archetypes

Archetypes are groupings of users based on their behaviours, motivations and values. For example, some users may value time and results, and behave in a more task focussed manner, while others may behave more casually and be more willing to browse to find the information they need. Archetypes help us understand how different people might behave, regardless of their demographic profile. As Paul rightly points out:

A person’s characteristics and behavior do not always align. The difference between characteristics and behavior, in some cases, could be very volatile.

Personas

Personas exist to humanise data and facilitate empathy with the end user. While segments and archetypes help us understand general trends in behaviour and demographics, personas make those trends relatable and help us understand how those different segments and archetypes might interact within the same person’s experience. A persona should be a richly detailed representation of just one user, not a generalisation of many users, and should always be based on thorough research and deep insight.

Putting it all together

Creating a detailed and useful representation of your user base relies on understanding them at various levels of detail.

Segments form the basis of our understanding- they give us the building blocks of demographics and characteristics from which we can begin to develop an understanding of our users.

Archetypes provide the next level of detail, helping us understand common behavioural patterns and predict users’ reactions and motivations.

Personas provide the final level of detail, painting a comprehensive picture of a single user instance- a single experience out of many.

Every persona should have a name, history and personality, yet each should also be representative of the general rules- the segmentations and archetypes- and should map back to those clearly. This helps us understand the potential struggles and emotions of the real users at the end of our products, while still maintaining the high level understanding of behavioural trends and demographics.

So, in response to the question, “which is better- personas or archetypes?” my response is that this is a false dilemma. Both have their own, equally important parts to play.