If you’re in product design or marketing, you’ll be familiar with ‘user personas’—fictional character documents, based on interviews and contextual enquiry with real customers, that summarise different types of customers with similar needs. 

Just like personas for human target users, non-human and non-user personas enable designers and decision-makers to keep the needs of these actants in mind as they make design and business decisions to reduce their impact upon non-humans/non-users, and ultimately to regenerate them. This empathy keeps a non-human/non-user’s well-being at the front of our minds, so that we see them not just as a resource but as a fellow actant to respect. 

But personas are not just a decision-making tool. 

They are also a process which educates the creators and establishes a shared understanding in a team and business, so that as we research to create a persona for, say, a tree, we learn about that tree, we understand it more and its importance as an organic machine keeping energy and matter flowing through the earth’s liveable habitat, creating that habitat on which we depend. 

This immersive process establishes our empathy for the non-human/non-users, and the tool helps us perpetuate our empathy. 

With this renewed respect for nature, we can also emulate its sustainable and regenerative forms and functions, to slowly infuse these into our creations, so that they too become interconnected and free of waste and pollution… just like a tree. 

This empathy, this connection of emotion and awareness generated by the non-human/non-user persona process and tool could be the tendrils of robust roots reconnecting modern designers, businesses, and citizens to nature’s cycles long respected by older cultures. 

That is the dream behind non-human/non-user personas, but they are new versions of old imperfect tools, so we need to experiment hard and cautiously, and share back generously. 

Some would argue we need to create less and live simpler. I agree. But I also believe that such a drastic change won’t happen soon without government action to mobilise the many. Or perhaps the effects of climate change will compound faster than we ever dared to imagine and force those drastic changes. 

Until more significant changes happen, I believe we can choose to do what we can with what influence and power we have. Just as the many forces impacting the stability of the planet’s thin sliver of space for life seem to be compounding, there must also be positive tipping points of change, possibly activated by millions of individuals doing what they can at the ground level. 

However, the impacts on those who create and use non-human/non-user personas also have the potential for evolving the use of non-human/non-user personas beyond design: 

• Reconnecting with our planet 

• Shifting from passively hoping for change to actively manifesting change 

These impacts could evolve education, business culture, and local and global discussions to create the more significant changes life on Earth needs, such as further enshrining the rights of nature in all constitutions. 

As I created personas for trees, bees, e-waste, child labourers, and others, many emotions arose—creating personas can be confronting, because the process reconnects us with our impact on the world by making us see and feel these impacts, empathising with those impacted, and reminding us that our relationship could be a lot healthier. 

But the process also shows us how we can make things healthier. This can foster a personal shift from passive hope to active hope through learning the skills and mindsets to respond to today’s wicked problems in tangible, practical, and measurable ways. 

Creating and using personas can be a very emotive, sometimes traumatic, and yet a very inspiring experience—a journey that many present and future humans and other lifeforms could greatly benefit from. 

What is a non-human? 

Non-humans are the planetary elements, environments, animals, and entities often considered ‘non-living’. 

Animals might include: 

• Animals of all sizes (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) to insects and microbes 

• Animals on land, sea, in the air, and underground  

• Domestic, livestock, captive, or wild 

• Whether ‘proven’ sentient or not 

Planetary elements and environments: 

• Vegetation (e.g., trees, forests, swamps, etc.) 

• Water systems (oceans, lakes, rivers, freshwater) 

• Climate and weather systems 

• Air, soil, landforms (e.g., mountains, hills, etc.) 

• Sunlight, noise, temperature 

• Microbes, viruses, diseases 

• Ecosystems of the above, and biodiversity as a whole 

Actants often considered ‘non-living’: 

• Data 

• E-waste 

• Dumping grounds 

• Abandoned dwellings 

• The Great Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean 

Non-human personas, however, only represent two of the life-centred design actant groups—animals and environments. 

More than user 

The third actant group, ‘non-users’, represents the ‘invisible’ humans directly or indirectly impacted by a product and business ecosystem at any phase of the product lifecycle, which could include: 

• Individuals, communities, and employees of organisations working within the product lifecycle 

• Individuals and communities not directly involved in the lifecycle but who are impacted by it, such as local communities, indigenous people, the homeless, etc. 

• We can also include different human knowledge systems, ways of existing, and belief systems as a non-user to create personas for 

Non-user personas may represent a real person or a persona group. They may be a combination of fictional representation and scientific data. 

Together, non-human and non-user personas help designers and decision-makers identify and respect life-centred design’s three actant groups—all people, lifeforms, and environments.