Where personas often seem to go wrong is casting them as a group of demographic traits and socioeconomic class, access to technology, etc. I think that’s what gave them a bad name.

As a tool to distill specific types of users in terms of goals, contextual use patterns, and pain points, I see them of great value in sparking discussion among internal teams.

In one case last summer in a contract role, I worked with a business analyst who totally despised personas as originally presented. When we brainstormed on refining the existing personas based on nuanced differences among HR roles, he became one of the biggest advocates. He had a wealth of insight to offer and his skeptical questioning sparked other product owners and business analysts to offer their insights too. The end result was a much clearer direction for designing a dashboard for different kinds of HR users.