User Persona

The whole point of a persona is to turn "the user" — that faceless average nobody actually designs well for — into one specific person you can picture. This one-page dossier gives them a name, an avatar with their initials, a role in a phrase, and a line they'd actually say, then a scenario band that sets the day-in-the-life where your product fits. Down the left runs a profile column — age, job, location, whatever details make them real; across the right, four zones map what they're after: Goals (what they're trying to achieve), Frustrations (what gets in their way), Motivations (what drives their choices), and Channels & Behaviors (where and how they show up). Build it from patterns you've genuinely seen across users, not a wish list — a persona is a composite, not a real individual. Once the archetype has a face, arguments get shorter: you stop asking "would people like this?" and start asking "would she?" Fill it in to circulate, or print it blank and sketch the persona as a team.

• Landscape
• 1 page
• Planning

Best for: Making "the user" concrete — one named, believable person the whole team can design, write, and decide for instead of a faceless average.