When I mentor UX researchers, I sometimes hear that they are not willing to do Persona research just because they’ve done it at the previous workplace or product team, and they already know everything about their users.

What makes your Persona different from any other Persona is the goal of why this persona is created, for example: 

  • Improve Product Experience
  • Understand users Pain Points and Motivations 
  • Explore product Opportunities 
  • Backlog prioritization
  • Etc 

Even if the goal for your persona was the same at your current and previous projects, the outcome of your research and the data would be and should be different. The same human (that resolves to Persona archetype) will have different Pain Points working with different products, their User Journey will be different, their Goals and Motivations would be different. Most of the Persona data from the other product will be useless, and often misleading.

There are some rare situations where  the persona data can be reused. For example, if you collect persona data across multiple products in the organization, the scope of each Persona shall remain consistent and transparent. 

In most cases it is recommended to run actual Persona research (not extrapolate from generic provisional assumptions), so your data will be viable and actionable, and help your team to reach their research goals.