Usually, creating an antipersona makes sense if your product or service: deals with sensitive information that, if inadvertently exposed, can threaten the users’ or organization wellbeing (e.g., fraud, identity theft, harassment, disinformation, illegal content) poses potential physical or emotional threats to people (e.g., injury, or death as the direct result of misusing the product). If there is an opportunity for these harms to occur as the direct result of anyone using the product, there should be one or more antipersonas to represent the risk. Always balance the chance of such a misuse with its consequences in order to determine if an antipersona is worth creating. Even a misuse that is very unlikely to happen might be worth of an antipersona if its consequences are extreme.

To solve problems and suggest solutions on behalf of others is to have power. As a result, we behavioral scientists have a heightened responsibility: Being in this privileged position requires recognizing when and where assumptions about “what good looks like” might creep in. When we design interventions—even just determining what options are available, or what the default choice should be—we shape other peoples’ experiences in ways we may not always fully appreciate. And our decisions to address certain problems while leaving others aside implicitly declares what challenges, and audiences, we think are worthy of receiving attention.