gettyUser personas are meant to help tech companies understand the people they’re building for, but they can quickly become little more than flat profiles filled with job titles, demographics and broad assumptions. When personas don’t reflect how people actually make decisions, use products or navigate competing priorities, they’re unlikely to offer much practical guidance to product, design, marketing or sales teams.Genuinely useful personas are grounded in real-world context and flexible enough to account for changing needs, behaviors, circumstances and buying dynamics. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council discuss common mistakes tech companies make when developing user personas and explain how to build profiles that better support product and business decisions.Build Personas Around User StatesThe biggest mistake is confusing identity with state. Personas assume people decide because of who they are, but behavior is driven by the state they’re in. For example, “7 a.m. me” walks past the donut; “7 p.m. me” says, “Two, please.” You need to understand the states that precede action, like fatigue, urgency, curiosity, confidence and stress. Build around the states that precede action, not static identities. Behavior is state-dependent, not identity-dependent. - Josh Bruni, Aires TechTurn Personas Into Vivid CharactersA big mistake is treating personas like static ICP summaries instead of vivid characters. Overgeneralized personas don’t capture the emotional route of decision-making under ambiguity and risk. Anchor each persona in a specific story: a name, a day in the life, concrete frustrations and a value trigger. If it doesn’t feel like someone your team could argue about, it won’t guide decisions. - David Etue, CyberbitForbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?Include Overlooked Stakeholder PersonasUser personas are often skewed toward product teams or end users, overlooking critical stakeholders such as finance (CFO), procurement, pricing, business leaders and so on. These “middle” personas are frequently either underappreciated or underdeveloped, limiting decision quality. A balanced, 360-degree persona mindset enables more informed, cross-functional decision-making—think, for example, about DevOps and FinOps personas, where business, tech and finance all get involved. - Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, AlysianLook Beyond Familiar Customer ProfilesA common mistake is building personas from what has been done versus the total addressable market. Often, companies build products that address personas they’re familiar with, which can limit the potential to sell to other personas and expand the audience base. It’s important to recognize this pattern to make sure you’re not pigeon-holing yourself into serving a narrow audience. - Yardley Pohl, interos.aiLet Observed Behaviors Replace AssumptionsThe biggest mistake is letting preconceived assumptions—not user behavior—define personas. Many organizations create demographic-based personas because they’re easy, but they’re rarely actionable. Instead, start with the end-use case and let real user data and observed behaviors shape personas. Behavior-driven personas lead to product decisions that actually improve customer outcomes. - Sundar Krishnan, OptimumDescribe Users’ Messiest MomentsAlmost every persona I’ve reviewed describes a user on their best day: calm, curious and with plenty of time. But nobody buys or abandons software on their best day. They decide during the messy moments: quarter close, an audit request, a client on hold. If your persona doesn’t describe that moment, it’s not going to help anyone make a real design decision. I’d rather have one persona built around a user’s worst Tuesday than five built around their ideal week. - Ravi Palwe, Capgemini USAGround Personas In Direct ResearchThe most common mistake is personas built on assumptions instead of real user data. Teams end up designing for who they imagine the user to be—often biased because they’re thinking about themselves—rather than the person who will actually use the product. The fix is grounding personas in actual research: interviews, behavioral data and direct feedback. Even a handful of real conversations will surface things a made-up persona never will. - Shawn Zhang, SanasBuild Outcome-Driven PersonasA common mistake is creating user personas based on assumptions rather than real customer behavior. Instead, build outcome-driven personas using customer interviews, product usage data and feedback, and update them regularly. To guide better product and business decisions, personas should explain not just who users are but also their goals and pain points. - Kirti Acharya, Anlage DigitalUse AI To Keep Personas DynamicTech companies often build user personas from subjective, static data, which creates mistaken assumptions about their business goals. Leveraging AI to analyze touchpoints, pain points and preferences can instead create dynamic personas that evolve over time, helping teams better understand who their users are, what they care about and how they will interact with the brand. - Michael Ringman, ibexConsider The Full Buying CommitteeTech companies often build customer personas around a single user without considering the broader group involved in the purchase decision. Enterprise technology purchases rarely involve a single decision-maker anymore. Security, procurement, finance, legal, IT and business stakeholders may evaluate the solution through different lenses, with different priorities and success criteria. - Atul Sabharwal, Snipp InteractiveIncorporate Customer And Implementation InsightsA common mistake is building personas from internal assumptions instead of customer insight. Like technology, personas should not be developed in a vacuum. Companies should interview existing business users and implementation teams, then update personas regularly so they reflect real needs, buying dynamics and day-to-day realities. - Robert Clark, Cloverleaf AnalyticsReduce The Effort Required To Build ProfilesToo often, tech companies attempt to capture structured data in form fields when users are busy and don’t have time to enter that much information. Platforms need to make it easier to build a profile for a user from external sources or documentation so the user lift to create a persona is lower. - Lane Campbell, GovSoftAdapt Personas To Each OrganizationOne common mistake is treating all personas as equal and assuming they apply uniformly across every target organization. In reality, depending on the organization, the same role can have very different priorities, influence, workflows and decision-making authority. - Brad Porter, Orion HealthCapture Human ContradictionsPersonas are useful only if they highlight paradoxes. Consistent personas are not human. For example, many people love to eat, but they talk about restraint. Or someone may boast about being virtue-driven but lie on their résumé. Capture this paradox, and you find your product’s purpose! - Mohan Nair, Emerge Inc.Focus On The Product ExperienceCompanies often create personas that describe who users are instead of how they experience a product. Great digital experiences come from understanding what users are trying to accomplish, where they encounter friction and how they move through key journeys—not from assumptions about age, title or generation. Design around those insights, and adoption follows. - Chase Williams, PathifyTie Personas To Specific Processes And Realistic WorkflowsThe most common mistake is building personas from assumptions rather than from real behavior and processes. Personas should be grounded in evidence such as real usage data and specific processes and structured around the jobs users are trying to perform and the friction real people would hit along the way. They should also be revisited periodically, as any persona that isn’t updated will tend to drift from reality. - Martin Taylor, Content GuruReflect Real Decision-Making PatternsThe biggest mistake is building personas around “who the user is” instead of “how the user behaves.” The most useful personas capture how people make decisions, what motivates them, what creates frustration and how success is measured in their world. Those insights help teams design products that fit naturally into the way customers already work, rather than expecting customers to change how they work to fit the product. - Anila Siraj, OpsBridge AdvisoryFocus On Users’ Decisions, Not Their Current SkillsOne mistake I have seen is building personas around what users know today. AI is changing that, giving users access to expanded knowledge and the ability to interrogate data in a way not possible before. A clinical researcher who once needed a data analyst can now interrogate data and refine questions directly with an LLM. Personas should evolve as well, focusing on the decisions users make, not the technical skills they have, because AI will keep expanding what’s possible. - Sriram Krishnan, Pedestal HealthValidate User Hypotheses Before BuildingStarting with flawed assumptions about your users is a common mistake. The hypotheses you develop about users form the foundation on which everything else is built. Testing and validating those hypotheses is key. Once you have a body of evidence—based on primary research with real people, not AI—to support your hypotheses, you can begin to build your product and company around those validated personas. - Peter Karlson, NeuEon, Inc.Base Personas On Human Decisions, Motivation And Pain PointsGround your personas in behaviors instead of demographics. Great personas reflect how people actually make decisions, what problems they’re solving, what motivates adoption and where they encounter friction. Rather than making assumptions, use real customer conversations and usage data in your persona creation process. - Nada Usina, NU Advisory Partners