Synthetic Personas:
What to Trust, What to Test, What to Avoid

A practical framework for navigating simulation, insight, and risk

Date: April 23, 2026 | Time: 2pm ET

Synthetic personas are rapidly moving from experimental tool to mainstream offering, appearing in nearly every CX, insights, and marketing pitch deck. While the term is everywhere, the definitions (and implications) remain unclear.

What exactly are you being sold? A model of your customers? A simulation of them? Or something in between?

This webinar gives CX, Marketing, and Insights leaders a practical framework for using synthetic personas responsibly, grounded in real-world decision-making, risk management, and insight generation.

Key Takeaways:

  1. A clear, working definition of synthetic personas and how they differ from traditional personas and research.
  2. A simple taxonomy to identify what kind of solution you are actually being sold.
  3. Three common failure modes and how to spot them before they affect decisions.
  4. Five critical questions to evaluate vendors and internal use cases.
  5. A practical diagnostic to assess organizational readiness.
  6. Clear guidance on:
    1. What to trust synthetic personas for.
    2. What to test before acting on their outputs.
    3. What to avoid to prevent costly missteps.

Presenter Bio:

Arnie Guha, Ph.D. is a Partner and Head of the User Experience Strategy and Design practice at Phase 5.

Arnie leads multidisciplinary teams focused on the human impact of emerging technologies, including the development of the TAR Framework (Trust, Alignment, Recourse) to ensure AI systems remain intelligible, aligned, and challengeable.

Arnie also serves as Chair of the Advisory Board at Green College (UBC), and Chair of the John B. Aird Gallery, and is Past President of The National Club, Toronto. He is the creative visionary behind Acid4Yuppies, a multidisciplinary art project exploring perception, experience, and consciousness through lightboxes, silk accessories, interior design, and immersive installations

Reserve your spot today to learn how to make CX measurable, meaningful, and actionable.

Speaker

Arnie Guha, Ph.D.

is a Partner and Head of the User Experience Strategy and Design practice at Phase 5.

This is an exclusive preview of our upcoming session at TMRE in October.  

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Steve Hansen, Partner, Innovation Practice 

Steve Hansen is a partner and the head of the Innovation practice who leads the firm’s US office in Minneapolis. Steve enjoys taking a “Zen mind, beginner’s mind” approach to innovation, especially when it has the potential to disrupt a market ecosystem. With almost 2 decades of experience in client-side marketing strategy, market research, and product management, Steve brings a client’s mindset and drive for actionable results to each project. He has extensive experience in capturing the view “from the outside” with a special focus on product and service innovation.  

Learn more about Phase 5 on our website.