Attitudinal archetypes: a strategic alternative to “user personas”
We've all heard of user profiles as a tool to foster empathy when designing products, services, or experiences. But does empathy alone guarantee us a deep understanding of people?
By ValentinAlvarez
The best way to illustrate this question is through Personasfictional individuals representing different types of users (Cole, 2021). These profiles allow design teams to keep in mind that the user is at the center of the process.
The Personas they are usually detailed descriptions that include demographic data, a photograph, name, interests, motivations, and even a life story. The goal is to represent a group with similar characteristics and facilitate user-centered decision-making.
However, this approach has a significant limitation: Sharing demographic characteristics does not guarantee similar behaviors, attitudes, or needs. The gaps left by statistical information are usually filled with supposed “intuitions” from designers, which are often closer to prejudices than to real user knowledge.
Even setting this aside, once the Personas, it's common for designers themselves not to know how to use them. Their usefulness often remains narrative: they help imagine a potential user and generate empathy towards them, but they don't help much beyond that (Cole, 2021).
A strategic alternative
At Gerundio, we aim to go beyond empathy; we aspire to a deep understanding of people in order to truly design for them. That's why we use an alternative to traditional personas: Attitudinal archetypes.
Unlike the Personas, archetypes are built from the analysis of patterns of behavior, attitudes, goals, and needs observed in real user groups. Their focus is less demographic and more behavioral, which helps to avoid stereotypes and prejudices (Cole, 2021).
A key principle behind archetypes is that user behavior is influenced by context. Archetypes allow for capturing and understanding that behavior in specific situations (Smashing Ideas, 2017).
While the Personas tend to focus on an individual and fixed story; archetypes describe modes of thinking and acting that can be shared by many people, without needing to define them by age, gender, or socioeconomic status.
Furthermore, archetypes do not operate on a one-to-one relationship with each user. It is possible for a person to move between various archetypes depending on their specific context or life stage. In this sense, archetypes are attitudinal manifestations, not fixed descriptions.
Archetypes provide us with a reliable foundation for designing solutions based on observable behaviors. They allow us to make clear, informed, and relevant design decisions for the reality of those who will interact with our products or solutions (Cole, 2021).
Design with impact
Another great advantage of archetypes is their transformative capacity. By understanding what works for a type of behavior, we can design experiences that resonate with what people truly want, need, or expect.
When we develop archetypes based on a matrix that considers the context in which they were observed, we can encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. This opens the door to influencing how users act.
People can transition from one archetype to another depending on how they interact with our product or solution. Our design can adapt to users' needs and drive them from one archetype to another that exhibits more desirable behavior (e.g., from irresponsible and fearful to responsible and confident).
Designing for users (not the other way around)
The use of archetypes prevents users from being pigeonholed with simplistic or misleading labels (Usability & Web Accessibility, n.d.). Furthermore, they allow us to maintain focus on the aspects that truly matter for design: motivations, needs, and behaviors.
This way, at Gerundio, we design in a way that adapts to our users, without them having to adapt to our design.
Are you looking to deeply understand your users? Write to us And let's see how we can help you.
