If you’ve worked in strategy, product, or experience design for any length of time, you’ve sat through “The Persona Slide.”
It’s usually a row of plausible faces with alliterative names like Marketing Mary or Operations Owen. Each is described in a tidy column of age, job title, and “motivations.” Everyone nods. Someone says, “Yes, that’s our audience.” And the work proceeds.
Here’s the problem: Neither the well-done version nor the badly-done version describes a real person.
Real people are walking contradictions. They want speed, but they also want to feel cared for. They want autonomy, but they also want guidance. They behave one way on a Tuesday morning and a completely different way on a Saturday afternoon—and they rarely know why.
A persona that doesn’t capture these tensions isn’t a persona. It’s a specification.
Specifications vs. Strategy
A specification is a simplified instruction set. It’s a target. It tells a design team to “make it efficient” or “keep it clear.” Specifications produce predictable outputs that meet stated requirements. That’s their job.
But strategy isn’t a specification problem. Strategy is the art of designing for what humans actually do, which is mostly to want incompatible things at the same time and resolve that contradiction differently depending on the context of their week.
The strategic value of a persona isn’t the bullet points; it’s the interior life. It should allow a decision-maker to hold a customer in their mind and ask: “What would this person actually do here?” A persona without tension cannot answer that question. It can only confirm what the strategy already wanted to do.
Case Study: Beyond the 2D Profile
I worked with a DIY brand that had spent years operating with two rigid audience categories—Retail and Trade—and a digital estate of 17d disconnected microsites built around that flat split.
When market pressure increased, leadership’s first instinct was that their existing personas were too thin. They had “profiles”—demographic sketches that told you someone’s job title and age—but these profiles failed to explain why behavior was so erratic. We didn’t just add more faces to the deck; we extended the dimensions of the personas they already had.
The breakthrough came when we realized that the same customer was several of these personas at once.
- The “Panic” State: On Friday afternoon, a customer needs to finish a job before guests arrive. They want speed, bundles, and zero friction. In this moment, even a seasoned “Trade” professional acts like a frantic novice.
- The “Exploration” State: On Sunday morning, that same person is planning a long-considered redecoration. Now, they want inspiration, curated palettes, and a deep-dive consultation.
The brand had been treating these as different people (Traits). They weren’t. They were the same people in different States of attention.
By extending their profiles into multi-dimensional personas, we revealed the tension between who the customer was and what they needed in the moment. The digital experience was failing to recognize the shift in context. It served neither state properly. The strategic pivot wasn’t moving from two audiences to nine; it was moving from designing for portraits to designing for moments.
The Commercial Cost of “Neat” Data
This isn’t just about design theory. The financial impact of misreading customer states is massive.
McKinsey reports that companies excelling at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average performers. Forrester finds that customer-experience leaders grow revenue at more than five times the rate of their competitors.
The common thread is clear: The brands that win recognize a customer’s actual state, not just their demographic profile. Personas built around demographics tell you who someone is; they cannot tell you which version of that person is currently making the decision.
The Litmus Test: Where is the Tension?
If you suspect your personas have ended up as neat columns with no contradictions, pick the one you reference most and look at the motivations.
Ask: Where is the tension?
If the answer is “There isn’t any—Mary just wants efficiency,” you have a specification, not a persona. To fix it, go back to your customers and listen for the tensions that drive their actual behavior:
- Stated Preference vs. Actual Behavior: Where do they say they value “quality” but consistently choose “convenience”?
- Contextual Shifts: How does their priority change when they are in a “rush” state versus an “exploration” state?
- The “Incompatible Wants”: Where does the same person want autonomy and guidance simultaneously?
Those tensions aren’t “noise” to be cleaned up for the slide deck. The tensions are the strategy. If your work doesn’t address the contradictions in your customer’s head, your customer will find a brand that does.
Build a Better Strategy
If your organization is stuck designing for “Marketing Mary” while the real world moves on, my book Actions for Innovation provides the frameworks to surface these tensions and turn them into a competitive advantage. It moves beyond the “persona slide” to help you build strategy that addresses people where they actually are.
[Link to Actions for Innovation]