What's it?

Personas: To put it simply, personas are characters created to represent the end consumers. These personas are used in the process of understanding and designing for the target users. A project may have one or multiple personas, each representing a specific demographic profile, including factors like age, gender, education, and interests.

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Archetypes: Archetypes are found in the characters of old literature and the heroes of popular myths. Aligning product brands or designs with an archetype can help attract users for the product or the brand. Unlike the persona, the archetype focuses directly on user behavior and how the consumer interacts with the product or website based on the archetype used in the product.

EX: For instance, in a payroll application, there could be defined personas such as a payroll practitioner, payroll accountant, payroll supervisor, and payroll manager. This approach works well when designing for medium to large client organizations. However, for small business segments, there might be only one person handling all payroll or tax tasks. In such cases, it becomes important to determine which persona to design for.

Sources: https://uxdesign.cc/archetypes-and-their-role-in-enterprise-user-experience-eux-d6f59a7c51d3

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Are archetypes better than personas?

I don't believe that archetypes are inherently superior to personas. Rather, I think both tools serve different purposes in strategic and tactical domains and should be utilized accordingly.

Personas help us understand who the customers are currently. They provide insights into their demographics and behavior. On the other hand, archetypes focus on the desired user behavior and how consumers interact with a product or website based on the archetype associated with it.

EX1: Demographically similar personas may exhibit different behaviors, requiring different approaches to serve them effectively. Conversely, personas with the same behavior may have different demographics.

EX2: Sometimes, organizations invest resources in personas that are more marketing-oriented and less useful for UX work. These personas may emphasize demographics and brand preferences rather than attitudes and behaviors.

Therefore, my recommendation would be to use archetypes to create a meaningful narrative that inspires and guides users in a specific direction. Once this direction is established, personas can be employed to assess and ensure that design choices align with the envisioned direction.

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How to create an archetype cluster?

Create archetypes as part of the analysis work already being done as part of other discovery-oriented qualitative UX research, such as interviews; this approach can prevent the perception of duplicate effort.

The key aspect is to ensure that the development of archetypes is driven by genuine users. This entails creating a realistic behavioral expectation based on a deep understanding of who the users are and how they typically act.

Here is a step-by-step guide to assist you:

1. Understand the primary behaviors of your target customer or ideal customer profile.
2. Clearly define the end goals of the product and its different features, i.e., what the product should help the user achieve.
3. Gain an understanding of how the ideal customer would utilize various product features to accomplish specific objectives.
4. Consider the environmental factors in which these actions occur, such as time of day or physical location.
5. Identify any psychological connections between the user and the product.

Tips:

To find user archetypes, UX researchers can follow these steps:

1. Define research goals: Clearly establish the goals and objectives of your research. Determine the information you need to gather about your users and the questions you want to answer.
2. Identify your target audience: Identify the specific group of people you want to study, ensuring they represent your intended user base.
3. Conduct user research: Employ research methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or other relevant techniques to collect data about your target audience.
4. Analyze research data: Analyze the collected data to identify patterns, insights, and common behaviors, attitudes, and needs among your users.
5. Develop user archetypes: Utilize the insights from your research to create user archetypes. These fictional characters should represent different user types, complete with names, personas, and descriptions of their needs and behaviors.
6. Validate archetypes: Validate the archetypes through additional research, testing

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Remember that user archetypes are not a substitute for user research. Instead, they are a tool that can help you better understand and design for your users.

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