A persona is a method to tell the story of a type of user, based on shared motivations, behaviours and needs.  

Personas can also be referred to as: 

  • human archetypes 
  • behavioural archetypes (when the persona focuses on capturing different behaviours) 
  • user profiles

When to use personas

Personas are a great tool to refer to when making decisions about your service or communicating user needs to stakeholders.  

They help to remind you of who you are designing the service for, and their challenges and needs.  

This short, step-by-step guide to creating user personas from UX Planet is a helpful method to get started in creating personas.