I read an article this week by Michael Crist in which he demonstrates why a Jobs to be done approach to development works better than Personas. ( https://hondo.wtf/posts/on-personas/)

Personas

There were some great points, notably the potential for biases which is inevitable especially with proto-personas.

I still however think that Personas offer a really valuable addition to the UX development process. They can act as a variance to a given user journey. Once you have drawn out the initial requirement or action on a site then personas help designers especially to think about the nuances that could make or break an experience for a certain demographic.

User journeys, tasks and nuances.

For example a path from Homepage to adding to a cart can be defined but then the use of personas based on the target user groups can help define, colours, tone of voice, text size and so on.

“When I’m at the store with two kids, I want to checkout quickly, so I don’t have to chase them around” - Unless you have experienced that it gives you little to change how you approach the solution, you might aswell just revise it to “I want to checkout quickly.”

As ever it is a case of using the tools available to you as and where they help rather than adhering to one method as the right and only solution.