UX designers are creating elegant user personas that include details irrelevant to the work at hand, reducing their value for teams. In addition, these personas often leave out contextual details and behaviors that specify the frustrations and issues users face. Without these details, personas are just another deliverable that doesn’t achieve their goal — which should be to help design teams feel closer to the people for whom they are solving problems.

Personas need relevance — a trait often lost in an effort to simplify and move quickly. What designers need is a new framework for creating personas. This framework should steer designers toward better understanding, empathy, and inclusion.