The persona I couldn't build

After synthesizing my check-in interviews, I set out to build three personas: a young professional, a working parent and an older, retired patient.

The first two came together quickly, because the interviews gave me plenty to work with:

• Alex, 25, works in IT. He's comfortable with tech but anxious at appointments. When he doesn't understand a question, he looks it up later instead of asking.
• Rachel, 38, is a working parent who lives by her calendar. Her family doctor has years of her records, yet the same questions come back at every visit, and waiting feels like time she doesn't have.

The third persona never got past a few placeholder details: an older patient with low tech literacy. Nobody I interviewed was over 50, and the older people I invited declined. Anything I wrote for her would have been my assumptions dressed up as research.

So I left her out. It felt like a gap then, and it still is one. Older patients are exactly the people a check-in app most needs to work for, so closing this gap comes before the next round of design.

Here's my plan for a second round of research:

• Recruit older patients first, not last
• Go where they already are, like a clinic or a community center
• Treat a missing persona as a research task, not a writing task

A persona is a summary of people you've met. If you haven't met them, it's fiction.