Inclusive personas to raise awareness and representation

This method helps you keep people and environments that are often ignored in mind throughout the design process.

What are inclusive personas?

Inclusive personas are personas created:

with characteristics that are often forgotten about
to represent people who are often left out of the design process
to represent the urban and natural environment that is often ignored in the process of innovation

Thinking about things like cultural background, socio-economic status and ability of your personas will:

Before you create your personas, do inclusive research with a diverse group of people, including marginalized communities. This will help your personas reflect their real characteristics, not assumed characteristics that might reflect unconscious biases
Create use cases showing how personas will interact with your product, process, or service
Collect focused data and remember that people often belong to more than one marginalised group and have specific experiences because of that overlap (intersectionality)
Define different aspects of your personas, such as demographics, behaviours, motivations, and challenges
Include details such as names, backgrounds, goals, and pain points. Make sure each persona represents a unique combination of characteristics and experiences
Share your personas with your team and stakeholders using storytelling techniques to make them relatable
Update your personas if you conduct new research – they should evolve as you learn more about your users

Below is a general example of a set of inclusive personas for different people that might be involved in an inclusive innovation project: