Seven archetypes representing the people who will use RequiemOS daily. Understanding them is essential to building a product that serves the entire funeral home team — from tech-hesitant owners to digital-native directors.
These aren't fictional characters — they're composites drawn from real discovery sessions with funeral home operators. Each persona represents a distinct pattern of tech comfort, workflow needs, and change-management requirements.
Built/inherited a 2-3 location funeral home. Thinks about succession planning but hesitant about handing over to her tech-native daughter.
Licensed funeral director. Client-facing. Works primarily days. Has been doing things the same way for 20 years. Deeply suspicious of software.
Second career. Previously in office administration. Tech-native. She SET UP Google Drive and Slack because funeral home has no IT.
Learned through 3-year apprenticeship. Works 3pm-11pm shifts. Doesn't have regular computer access. Has a flip phone.
Chose funeral service for meaningful work. Interested in modernizing grief experience. Considering leaving for larger, more tech-forward chains.
Dedicated dispatch/capacity function. Owns weekly scheduling for services, prep, attendants, vehicles across every location. Single point of failure. Not client-facing.
Retired middle-school principal. Recruited through Knights of Columbus. Works part-time — a few funerals a week. Doesn't need the income; enjoys the structure and community.
One size does NOT fit all. Here's what RequiemOS must deliver to serve the entire team successfully.
If you optimize for Margaret, you lose Sophie.
If you design for Sophie, Margaret feels overwhelmed.
If you ignore Rob's need for paper, he resists adoption.
If Nadia's dispatch board doesn't reduce her clicks, she reverts to Excel — and nobody else can operate the scheduling surface.
If Gordon has to install anything on his personal phone, or log in on a shared device, chain-of-custody scan integrity fails at the field-attendant boundary.
Your MVP must have persona-specific paths — different entry points, different primary interfaces. This is how funeral homes actually adopt software. And the paths must compose — small operators layer multiple personae onto the same person, and the UI cannot insist otherwise.
The funeral industry has 72% of workers over age 40 AND a growing influx of tech-native directors. You MUST serve both, or adoption stalls.
Not everyone adopts at the same pace. Here's the realistic timeline for each archetype.
Sophie: Wants modern tools, frustrated with paper
Jessica: Tech-native, sees efficiency immediately
Nadia: If the dispatch view is right, she is the earliest and most vocal advocate; if it isn't, she reverts to Excel and doesn't come back
Margaret: Sees business ROI, trusts peer advice
David: Influenced by peer success, sees family benefit
Rob: Needs paper alternative, supervisor support, respect
Gordon: Needs paper day-sheet, SMS, no personal-device requirement, and a chain-of-custody scan model that survives shared devices
The seven personae above reflect a multi-role operator at Kearney's scale — a two-to-six-location cluster with enough headcount for role specialisation. Not every RequiemOS customer will look like this.
At the smallest end, a single-location independent funeral home may have one to three staff carrying most of the personae above simultaneously. A director there is often David + Sophie + Jessica + partly Nadia at the same time — they meet families, they schedule the attendants, they invoice, they order caskets, they update the calendar.
This is not a new persona — it is a role-flexibility axis the UI must accommodate. Specifically:
This shape argues for a role-based permission model layered over a shared UI, rather than persona-specific applications. The persona set above defines the design targets; the multi-hat operator defines the composition rules.