Designing for women’s real digital lives
Most digital systems are built on a flawed assumption that access equals use. Digital Personas goes beyond measures like device ownership or internet use to reveal how women actually engage with digital, shaped by social, cultural, and economic realities. Built on research across Nigeria, Kenya, and Senegal, it connects lived experience with population-level data to guide grounded decisions about where digital systems work, and how to design for them.
Links to key pages
Digital Personas can be used across the lifecycle of digital design and implementation, helping teams make more grounded and differentiated decisions.
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Stories
Dive into illustrative stories from research that reveal how digital engagement unfolds in context.
Section explaining key features covered
Design the right interventions
Assess where digital solutions are likely to be effective, and where non-digital or hybrid approaches may be more appropriate.
Shaping experience and features
Align product features, interactions, and UI/UX with how people actually use digital, including language and format, and how trust and safety are handled.
Targeting and delivery
Design appropriate engagement strategies, including onboarding and ongoing support, that reflect differences in access, capability, and other aspects of digital use.
Stress-testing and iteration
Identify who may be excluded, where the design may break down, and how solutions need to be adapted before scaling.
Combining in-depth qualitative research with population-level data
Developed across multiple contexts, the Personas are grounded in lived experience and situated within population-level patterns. Building on Pathways’ segmentation, they reveal how digital engagement takes shape within and across different segments.
How Digital Personas were DevelopedDigital Personas are created by systematically linking qualitative insights to population-level data while preserving contextual grounding.