State Personas
Identity in Four Dimensions
The system does not ask who you are. It estimates what state you are in, right now.
Customer experience has been built on static personas in a world where identity is not static at all. This volume replaces profile-thinking with a state-based ontology: identity as a time-dependent system state shaped by context, goal, cognitive capacity, affect, and technical friction.
Instead of narratives and segments, the book introduces an operational language: identity as an integrated signal flow over a sliding time window, interpreted into a momentary state persona. This is the missing bridge between CX and real system behavior – the layer where identity can shift from “Expert” to “Survivor” under rising cognitive load and interface friction.
The practical implication is blunt: if your product speaks to an “Expert persona” while the user is in a “Survivor state”, you accelerate churn. State personas make this mismatch measurable, predictable, and designable – and they prepare the foundation for the next step: algorithmic steering before the decision (the PRE-layer).
Coming April 2026
Available soon on:
Amazon
Apple Books
Google Play Books
Who is this book for:
- For decision-makers who sense that personas and segments explain less and less of real behavior
- For CX, product, and UX professionals who need a model that includes time, load, and context shifts
- For architects and technical leaders building predictive, adaptive systems that react to state transitions, not averages
- For AI teams who want to move beyond “people like you” toward “users in this state right now”
- For readers who want a language to detect and prevent cognitive collapse before churn happens
Why do experience systems keep addressing a person who no longer exists?
Modern customer experience, UX, and personalization are built on an assumption of stable identity: personas, segments, and profiles. In reality, human behavior does not emerge from who someone is, but from the state they are in at a given moment.
State Personas dismantles the idea of fixed identity and replaces it with a dynamic model in which identity is understood as a temporary system state. The book explains why an “expert” can suddenly become a “survivor,” why user journeys break without warning, and why personalization fails precisely when it matters most.
At the core of the book is a signal-based understanding of identity. Cognitive load, context, goal orientation, and affective state continuously shape behavior. When systems fail to recognize these shifts, they introduce friction themselves – accelerating disengagement, collapse, and churn.
State Personas offers a new conceptual language for systems operating in nonlinear, high-variance environments. It connects neuropsychology, adaptive design, and AI into a coherent framework that moves beyond static profiles toward real-time state awareness.
This is not a book about better personalization.
It is a book about why persona-driven thinking has reached its limits – and what must replace it.
If your product speaks to a persona that no longer exists, it is speaking into a void.
State Personas teaches you to listen to signals instead.