What User Interviews Taught Me That Personas Couldn’t

When I started working on the Foxconn "Image Organizer" project, I expected personas to guide my design decisions. But early on, I realized that real conversations with real people gave me something even more valuable: nuance.

During interviews with employees across different departments, I noticed a gap between their documented workflows and what they actually did day to day. Some skipped steps that felt redundant, while others used workarounds that weren’t documented at all. These were the kinds of insights no persona could surface.

Personas are great for creating shared understanding, but interviews gave me the texture—the small frustrations, the unspoken shortcuts, the moments of "I wish this just... worked." That depth of insight changed the way I approached the design. Instead of designing for a hypothetical "User A," I designed for the very real people I had spoken with, whose challenges and voices stayed with me through every sketch and wireframe.

This taught me that listening is not just a research step—it’s a design tool. The best solutions start by simply hearing what people are already trying to do. From there, design becomes less about invention and more about alignment.

It also reminded me that users are rarely linear—they’re human. The flexibility to adapt workflows to their real behavior made the solution stronger and more usable. If I had stuck only to personas, I would have missed out on those subtle, real-world behaviors that make or break a product’s success.