Published on March 27, 2026
As a UX professional in today’s data-driven landscape, it’s increasingly likely that you’ve been asked to design a personalized digital experience, whether it’s a public website, user portal, or native application. Yet while there continues to be no shortage of marketing hype around personalization platforms, we still have very few standardized approaches for implementing personalized UX.
That’s where we come in. After completing dozens of personalization projects over the past few years, we gave ourselves a goal: could you create a holistic personalization framework specifically for UX practitioners? The Personalization Pyramid is a designer-centric model for standing up human-centered personalization programs, spanning data, segmentation, content delivery, and overall goals. approach, you will be able to understand the core components of a contemporary, UX-driven personalization program (or at the very least know enough to get started).
For the sake of this article, we’ll assume you’re already familiar with the basics of digital personalization. A good overview can be found here: Website Personalization Planning. While UX projects in this area can take on many different forms, they often stem from similar starting points.
Common scenarios for starting a personalization project include:
– Your organization or client purchased a content management system (CMS) or marketing automation platform (MAP) or related technology that supports personalization.
– The CMO, CDO, or CIO has identified personalization as a goal.
– Customer data is disjointed or ambiguous.
– You are running some isolated targeting campaigns or A/B testing.
– Stakeholders disagree on personalization approach.
– Mandate of customer privacy rules (e.g., GDPR) requires revisiting existing user targeting practices.
Regardless of where you begin, a successful personalization program will require the same core building blocks. We’ve captured these as the “levels” on the pyramid. Whether you are a UX designer, researcher, or strategist, understanding the core components can help make your contribution successful.
From top to bottom, the levels include:
1. North Star: What larger strategic objective is driving the personalization program?
2. Goals: What are the specific, measurable outcomes of the program?
3. Touchpoints: Where will the personalized experience be served?
4. Contexts and Campaigns: What personalization content will the user see?
5. User Segments: What constitutes a unique, usable audience?
6. Actionable Data: What reliable and authoritative data is captured platform to drive personalization?
7. Raw Data: What wider set of data is conceivably available (already in our setting) allowing you to personalize?
We’ll go through each of these levels in turn. To help make this actionable, we created an accompanying deck of cards to illustrate specific examples from each level. We’ve found them helpful in personalization brainstorming sessions, and will include examples for you here.
North Star
A North Star is what you are aiming for overall with your personalization program (big or small). It defines the overall mission of the personalization program. Examples of North Stars might include:
1. Function: Personalize based on basic user inputs. Examples include “raw” notifications, basic search results, or system user settings.
2. Feature: Self-contained personalization components like advanced optimizations (geolocation) and customized modules.
3. Experience: Personalized user experiences across multiple interactions and user flows, such as email campaigns or landing pages.
4. Product: Highly differentiating personalized product experiences, like Spotify’s algorithmic playlists.
Goals
In any good UX design, personalization can help accelerate designing with customer intentions. Goals are the tactical and measurable metrics that will prove the overall program is successful. Common goals include:
– Conversion
– Time on task
– Net promoter score (NPS)
– Customer satisfaction
Touchpoints
Touchpoints are where the personalization happens. This will be one of your largest areas of responsibility. They can be multi-device (mobile, in-store, website) and should improve a user’s experience at a particular point in the journey. Examples include:
– Email: Role
– In-store display
– Native app
– Search
Contexts and Campaigns
Once you’ve detailed some touchpoints, consider the actual personalized content a user will receive. Personalization tools refer to these as campaigns, shown programmatically at certain touchpoints to specific user segments.
User Segments
User segments are created prescriptively or adaptively, based on user research or A/B testing. You need to consider how to treat:
– Unknown users
– Guest users
– Authenticated users
Actionable Data
Every organization with any digital presence has data. It’s about determining what data you can ethically collect on users and how you can use it. A recent study indicates that about 80% of businesses utilize at least some form of first-party data to personalize customer experiences.
Pulling it Together
While the cards serve as a foundational inventory, they provide more value when thought of as a coherent grouping. a card “hand,” one can trace the entire trajectory from leadership focus through to strategic and tactical execution.
Lay Down Your Cards
A sustainable personalization strategy must consider near, mid, and long-term goals. Even leading CMS platforms cannot instantly produce meaningful results from a personalization program. However, there is a common grammar across all personalization activities that these cards attempt to map.
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