Creating User Personas for Your Project
A user persona is a fictional but evidence-based representation of a key user type for your product. Personas help the entire project team — including non-designers — make consistent, user-centred decisions.
What Goes Into a Persona
- Name and photo: Humanises the persona and makes it memorable
- Demographics: Age range, role, technical proficiency — relevant characteristics that affect how they use your product
- Goals: What are they trying to achieve when they use your product?
- Frustrations: What currently gets in the way of achieving those goals?
- Behaviours: How do they currently work? What tools do they use? What are their habits?
- Quotes: Representative statements drawn from user research that capture their perspective authentically
How Many Personas?
Most projects need 2–4 primary personas. More than this and personas become unwieldy. If your product serves genuinely distinct user types with very different needs, each should have a persona. If the differences are minor, one persona with noted variations is sufficient.
How We Create Them
We synthesise personas from user research data — interviews, surveys, and analytics. Personas created without research are just assumptions with a name and photo. We avoid this approach as it can mislead the team into designing for fictional users rather than real ones.
How to Use Them
Personas should be visible throughout the project. When evaluating a design decision, ask: "Would [Persona Name] understand this? Would this frustrate them?" This simple question keeps the team anchored to user needs.