A persona in user-centered design and marketing is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way. Marketers may use personas together with market segmentation, where the qualitative personas are constructed to be representative of specific segments.
- Representative human profiles based on archetypal descriptions of users from research
- Crafted from information collected from real users through sound field research and captures common behaviors in meaningful and relatable profiles.
- They are useful in humanizing design focus, testing scenarios, and aiding in design communication.
- Human descriptions facilitate easy empathy and communication, while distinctions create useful targets for responsible design.
- Affinity diagramming or other methods can be used to cluster similarities across users to form archetypes.
- Personas are typically page-length descriptions, with a name, a photo, and a story describing key aspects of life, goals, and behaviors.
- Personas are used as a lasting human reference by teams throughout all phases of the project.
- Provide a persuasive human reference when communicating research summaries and scenarios to clients.