Thankfully, our clients’ disagreement over the right way to present race turned into a rethinking of our whole approach. Pretty soon, we’d removed all the stock photos and replaced them with icons of people working—giving presentations, sitting nose-deep in research materials, that sort of thing. I haven’t attached a photo to a persona since.
Personas are about the customer’s motivation/pain/goals, not their demographics. Separate those out and go more cartoon with the identity, focus on the motivation.
