User Persona

User personas are created to represent archetypal users of a product in order to summarize the goals and needs of a specific target group. The idea is to picture a typical user in order to come up with well-founded decisions for a user-friendly product.

For that, a persona is not limited to the actual task at hand but also contains aspects such as demographic data, insights into the family situation, skills, or key motivational drivers — anything that makes that persona more vivid.

Of course, for tech products, a key aspect is to what extent these personas are tech-savvy and open to changes in their environments. For example, whether they are the change agents always pushing for innovation or rather the keeper of the status quo.

For the internal product team, personas help to picture the users of a certain product or feature and to quickly bring the entire team into the same situational context — e-g. when user personas are used in user stories.