Not just persona. There's journey mapping, storymapping, design thinking, storybrand exercise, designops, formative/summative/ generative research, ethnographi

Not just persona. There's journey mapping, storymapping, design thinking, storybrand exercise, designops, formative/summative/ generative research, ethnographic study, service design, heuristics, lean ux, contextual inquiry. I'm not saying these are all useless, but many are just old things re-packaged. And I've noticed that UX people are rarely challenged by other stakeholders because no one can possibly keep up with what any of these mean. It's part FUD and part obfuscation. If you you have good handle on who your customer base is (current and target), then no, you don't need personas. Just use real data. Where I become dumbfounded is when large companies with mountains of customer data with complicated segmentation and profiles continue to rely on just 5-6 same personas.