Archetype vs. User Persona: Scalability and Roles in Product 🛠️

In Product Management, it’s essential to understand your potential customers. Archetypes and user personas are tools that, although often confused, have distinct purposes. Let’s see how they differ and complement each other.

Archetype

🌐 Generality: Represents universal patterns of behaviors and characteristics. They are timeless ROLES that people assume in their lives.

💡 Function: Helps to understand the universal motivations and desires of human beings. It addresses fundamental roles such as “The Hero” (someone who faces challenges and seeks triumph) or “The Caretaker” (someone who protects and nurtures others). Carl Jung defined up to 12: Caretaker, Jester, Magician, Outlaw, Regular Guy, Innocent, Explorer, Creator, Hero, Sage, Ruler, Lover.

User Persona

🎯 Specificity: Details a specific segment of your audience with particular characteristics, goals, and challenges based on research and data, tailoring it directly to a character.

💡 Function: Provides clarity about the needs and behaviors of a particular group of users. It is essential for design decisions and functionality.

🔄 Scalability: Although user personas are specific, the concept is scalable. You can have multiple user personas addressing various segments of your audience, ensuring your product remains relevant to different users.

📌 Key Point: Archetypes focus on universal roles and motivations that people adopt, while user personas focus on specific user segments and their particular needs. By combining the emotional depth of archetypes with the precision of user personas, more tailored solutions can be designed.

Do you have experience combining both in your work? How do you manage the scalability of user personas in your projects? Share your thoughts in the comments below! 👇