Persona

A persona is a manually labeled fictional character or a real user that can represent a segment of users that share attributes or traits that allow for clear bucketing, for example, age, gender, location, etc. Since this is a manual exercise it is recommended to build only a handful of personas.

Why it matters: Personas act as stand-ins for large segments of your customer base. Your team uses personas to see decisions (features, communication, marketing) from the eyes of the customers.

• General focus groups aren’t very useful because they represent conflicting ideas and priorities. In contrast, focus groups built from personas help get feedback and validate assumptions about that persona.