Personas should be iterative

The persona creation process is iterative. As new data is collected, personas should be revised and improved. You may find out that the two personas share the same characteristics and can be combined into one. Or a persona may contain enough distinctive features to be split into two personas.

When is it time to update your personas? According to the NN Group, it should happen when there are:

• Changes in your business and technology. If your product or your competitors' products have evolved significantly, it's likely that users' goals and tasks have changed too.
• Changes in user demographics and interaction patterns. Pay attention to whether your user segments have expanded and the demographics have changed correspondingly. Stay up-to-date with your website analytics and user testing data. Changes in users' behaviors, expectations, and needs are another reason for updating your existing persona description.

How often should you update your personas? According to a NN Group survey among 156 user-experience professionals, persona updates should occur every 1–4 years. Those who prefer to make small tweaks here and there, like 28% of respondents, may revise personas quarterly or more frequently.^[1]