My thoughts on creating better service experiences

And the pitfalls of demographic-based user personas

Think back to what you were like when you were about 13 years old. OK, hold that image of yourself for a bit.

When I was 13, I was horrible to my mother. I was so angry and I rankled against who I saw as a person who wanted to control me. I kept to myself, shared nothing with my family, and definitely missed many good years with my mom until I finally grew up and realized she wasn’t a bad person after all.

That relationship was what I prepared myself for with my own daughter. You can imagine my surprise that it hasn’t been like that (so far). Quite the opposite. In fact this past weekend, we found ourselves hanging out at the mall, walking, talking, and laughing together.

The experience that bugged me

I almost ruined our day because of our experience at Dillards. (not familiar? Dillards is a department store here in Texas -- like Macy's.)

We decided to check out the fancy dress section in the Juniors department because my kiddo wants a dress like Taylor Swift wore in one of her Eras Tour photos. The dress section was busy with other girls shopping for dresses. It must be time for Homecoming dances.

“Hey, you should try one of these on -- just to see, “ I told her. So she picked out one, and we went over to the dressing room in the middle of the Juniors department. The dressing room was jammed. There were so many people, it was overwhelming. Not fun.

But I knew there was a nearby dressing room just across the aisle and we made our way over to it.

The dressing room was in a section right next to Juniors, but not a “Juniors” dressing room… apparently. It was completely empty and quiet. So I made my way in, but my daughter didn't follow.?

I turned back, puzzled -- “come on,” I told her.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Why?” That’s when I saw a staff member who had stopped my daughter.

“Juniors can’t try on here. Juniors have to try clothes on in the Juniors department,” the staff member told me.

I felt the anger and the embarrassment well up in me. “Well, the Juniors dressing room is slammed with people, so I guess we’ll just put these back.”

We walked out, and I was seething. My daughter said, “You’re mad. I can tell you’re mad. I don’t care. It’s no big deal.”

But to me it was a big deal. The rule felt discriminatory and unfair. And I felt embarrassed because I hate being corrected by store employees. It was only last winter when my daughter was trying on clothes in the SAME dressing room we were just told we couldn’t use.

I held myself back from complaining. That seemed like a very “Karen” thing to do even though it was totally unfair.

Enter the user experience reflection

On reflection, I can guess the reason for the rule. Maybe someone didn’t clean up after themselves. Or maybe a bunch of kids or teens made a ruckus and disturbed other shoppers. That’s when the store may have decided that all Juniors needed to be limited to a single dressing room.

This is where the UX professional in me starts thinking about the experience itself. Let me put on my UX hat.

When businesses design customer experiences, the process starts with the customers themselves and what they need. As a UX'er, I create personas for each customer group so I can better understand who I design for.

Let’s assume that Dillards has multiple personas for its shoppers. There’s lots of ways they could think about their customers, but chances are pretty high that they separate groups of customers by demographics. Why do I think this? Well, you can see it in how the store is organized.

1. Women
2. Men
3. Children 12 and under
4. Juniors (teenage girls 13-18)

Let’s think about how we might create a persona for Juniors, based on demographics. Today’s Juniors fit right at the tail end of Gen Z and beginning of Gen Alpha. Here’s how I might make it if I focused on their age group characteristics first.

At some point, something happened that made this particular Dillards change the experience for the Juniors section. I can only guess, but it seems that the Dillards store experienced an event that negatively colored its view of Juniors, and so they decided to make a change to restrict this group of shoppers to a single dressing room area.

Let’s imagine that they made the rule because a group made a mess and disturbed other shoppers. Our persona might change like this:

Can Juniors be annoying? Yes. Might this description fit parts of the age group? Absolutely. But here's where I start wondering.

Are these characteristics true of ALL people in this group? What about when the characteristics don’t fit? Are all Juniors untrustworthy? Are all teens loud?

Let’s go back to that image of yourself at 13. What were you like? How did you act? How did your behavior change when you were with your mom or at school?

I’m going to guess that there were things about you that differ from the stereotype of teens. So this is where the demographics start to lead us down paths that may not make sense.

Rethinking how we create personas

I travel and speak to various groups about the problem with creating personas based on blanket demographics. It can easily lead to stereotyping.

A stereotype is a fixed, over-generalization of a group of people. It’s a cognitive shortcut we all use, often without realizing it. It’s a tool our brain uses so we don’t have to use as much brain power. But it’s also based heavily on what we’ve already learned about that group of people, factual or not.

Demographics can lead us astray. Take a look at this comparison between the following two people’s demographics.?

On the surface, they look just alike. But if we created the same experience for these two men, we might completely miss the mark.

Here’s who they are:

King Charles and Ozzy Osborne couldn’t be more different personality-wise (based on what we know about their public personas). Yet, their demographics make them look alike.

It’s kind of like using astrology to decide how people act. Let’s take a look at the horoscopes for today. Imagine that in addition to being lively and fun, Leo’s also love Dr. Pepper and the best way to make them happy is to give them a cold Dr. Pepper.?

So what if we design an experience to make sure that any Leo that walks in our store gets a Dr. Pepper? How do you think that would go?

It would go great for the Leo’s that like Dr. Pepper. But there’s likely a fair percentage of people that don’t like Dr. Pepper. That means we’re wasting time and energy on providing access to a product that some members of the group don’t want. You might even gross out the Leo’s that actually hates Dr. Pepper. (Weird, but true. Some people don’t like the flavor.)

So what do we do if we don’t use demographics as the base for our personas?

Behaviors over demographics

Behaviors unite humans, across cultures, age groups, politics, geography… you name it. They break the stereotypes and allow us to focus on creating experiences for groups of people based on how they behave.

I’m going to borrow an example from a library designer I met once.

Let’s imagine that you want to create experiences for your users in your university’s library system. You might start by looking at the various groups of people based on their demographics. In this case, the demographics could be student group.

1. Undergraduate students
2. Graduate students
3. Researchers / doctoral students

We could definitely design special experiences for all of these groups. But do all of the people within these groups have the same needs? Or preferences? What if we started with their study behaviors instead?

1. Students who like to study alone
2. Students who like to study in groups
3. Students who prefer to study with access to rare books
4. Students who prefer to study with access to highly technical material

This is a very different list.

Based on the behaviors here, we might design the experience very differently. For example, we might create solo study corrals in quiet areas for those who like to study alone. For another group we might create large study areas, with room for larger groups, in areas where talking and discussion wouldn’t bother other people.

Let’s go back to our Dillards example. We have hypothesized that the actions of people in the Juniors group have influenced this persona negatively, causing the store to institute a rule to contain this group in a specific dressing room area.

What if we think about the shoppers based on behaviors, instead of demographics? My daughter and her friends have a set of behaviors that may not exactly line up with the typical teen demographics.

1. Shops with mom
2. Clear idea of personal style
3. Follows rules
4. Carries phone with them everywhere
5. Highly open to other cultures, genders, and opinions
6. Not employed -- yet -- so no personal income. Uses parent’s income.

How might we make different decisions about the experience for these shoppers? We can ask ourselves questions like:

• How should our customer feel?
• What goals can we help them accomplish with the least frustration?
• If they need help, how can we provide it?

Considering that they are also shopping with mom, we need to consider the experience for her as well? How might mom’s experience go?

What about different behaviors?

So far we've looked at the behaviors of one group, but behaviors can also vary widely.

Let’s look at the behaviors of my 17-year-old (they/them). If we apply the original persona I created, they wouldn’t even be included because they are non-binary and it would be assumed they shop in the men’s department. (Here’s an article on how gender-based categories are non-inclusive.)?

Here’s how their behaviors would look:

1. Shops with friends
2. Clear idea of personal style
3. What are rules? But seriously -- doesn’t want to get in trouble
4. Carries phone with them everywhere
5. Highly open to other cultures, genders, and opinions
6. Employed, uses personal income for clothing purchases

These sets of behaviors won’t apply to ALL people in the 13-17 age range. But these behaviors might also apply to people outside of this group. Our personas could be inclusive because we’re focused on specific behaviors that could apply across demographics. That means we can better address individual needs.?

We might also be able to avoid blanket rules that unfairly punish people who didn’t do anything to cause problems in the first place. Now that’s inclusive and fair design. That’s a better experience.

UX professional hat off

Here are the consequences of unfairness and poor user experiences. You lose trust. When businesses lose their customers’ trust, they risk losing their business.

My family had been shopping pretty regularly at Dillards. Unfortunately for the store, the emotions I felt on that last visit will likely keep me from returning for a long time.?

We went to Forever 21 after that. It was fun, the people were nice, and no one told me we couldn't use a dressing room. The experience felt better.

Experience design matters.

Read more

• Rethinking User Personas
• User personas: What are they and how to use them
• Understanding Five Ecommerce User Personas
• UX design for gender-neutral users