Personas vs Archetypes: Choosing the Right Tool

At the start of a project, one of the first things I’ll push for is getting a shared understanding of the audience. It’s not optional. We can’t make good decisions until we know who we’re designing for, and that means being clear about the types of people using the product or service.
Sometimes clients arrive with persona work already done, sometimes we’re starting from scratch. Either way, we get into it early, clarifying what kind of model will be most useful for the work ahead. That might mean developing a few proto personas to align assumptions, or moving straight into something more structured.

In some cases, that’s a persona. In others, I steer toward archetypes.

The problem with fixed personas

Personas can be a great tool, especially when they’re grounded in research and focused on real goals or behaviours. But in practice, that’s not always how they’re used.

You’ve probably seen the dated over-specified kind:

“Lauren, 38, drives a VW, shops at Sainsbury’s, uses Facebook Messenger to stay in touch with friends.”

Once you’ve gone that far, the team often stops thinking in terms of user needs and starts thinking in terms of fictional people. It creates a false sense of precision. It can also be restrictive, especially when users don’t fit neatly into those boxes.

To be clear, the issue isn’t personas themselves, it’s when they become too narrow, too hypothetical, or too fixed to be useful.

What I mean by ‘archetypes’

I use the term ‘archetypes’ as defined by the Nielsen Norman Group: a representation of user behaviours, goals and attitudes that isn’t tied to a fictional individual. Unlike personas, which are personified with names, photos and biographical details, archetypes deliberately avoid that. They focus on patterns, how people think and act, without implying a fixed identity.

They’re especially useful when the same person might shift mindset, behaviour or role over time, the focus is on how people act, not who they are. Some teams call these “modes” or “mindsets” instead. Whatever the term, the focus is on behaviour, not backstory.

Proto personas: start with what you’ve got

One way we often begin that work is with proto personas. These are early sketches based on assumptions, usually shaped with the client, using whatever data or impressions are already available. They help get something concrete into the process quickly.

From there, we decide how to evolve them. That depends on what we’re learning. We might move towards more detailed, validated personas if the audience is stable and clearly segmented. But if the audience shifts or overlaps, or if behaviour varies by context, we’ll pivot to archetypes.

A recent example: The Data City

On a recent project for The Data City, archetypes were the better fit.

The platform serves a broad range of sectors, and users often arrive with clear, sector-specific needs. But across those sectors, we saw strong behavioural overlaps. People might be researching, validating data, seeking a partner for delivery, or exploring long-term integration, regardless of whether they worked in policy, investment, or research.

If we’d taken a traditional persona approach, we’d have needed to create multiple versions of the same behavioural type, one for each sector. That would’ve added unnecessary complexity without improving the design outcomes.

Using archetypes meant we could focus on intent and behaviour without tying it to a fixed role or industry. It gave the team a clearer, more manageable model to work with, one that supported empathy, guided content and comms, and stayed relevant even as user understanding deepened or the product offer evolved.

Threading it through the process

Once we’ve landed on the right audience model, we use it throughout the design process. Archetypes (or personas) shape empathy maps, journey maps, user stories, content decisions and testing. They’re not just a one-off deliverable, they shape decisions from start to finish and often stay in use long after the project ends.

Archetypes in particular tend to stay relevant, because they describe behaviours and needs that don’t change as quickly as job titles or segments might.

So when do I use personas?

Personas still have their place. I’ll use them when:

• The audience is relatively stable and well understood
• There’s strong qualitative or quantitative research to support them
• Stakeholders benefit from seeing user needs presented as real people with stories, not abstract patterns
• When content strategy depends on targeting distinct groups, personas help make that practical

In those cases, a well-constructed persona, built from research, not fiction, can be a really effective way to align the team.

It’s not about the label

Whether you call them personas, archetypes, modes or jobs, the point is the same: understand who you’re designing for, what they’re trying to do, and how that might change.

What matters is choosing a model that helps the team see users clearly and make better decisions.