Personas are fictitious characters that are created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product. Personas are most often used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software or online applications, in which the goals, desires, and limitations of the user are considered when designing the product. They are also considered a part of interaction design. Personas are useful in helping to guide decisions about a product, such as features, interactions, and visual design. A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of real user group. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1-2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to bring the persona to life.
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Personas are a useful tool, but they need to be built with care. It's very easy to write a persona which on a quick glance looks good, but is actually not.
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Review: The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design
The Persona Lifecycle describes the value of personas, and offers detailed techniques and tools to conceive, create, communicate, and use personas to create [great] product designs. John Pruitt and Tamara Adlin provide examples, samples, and illustrations for persona practitioners to imitate and model. It is important to emphasize that the use of personas is a method that compliments other user-centered design techniques, including user testing, scenario-based design, and cognitive walkthroughs.
Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Reviews>User Centered Design>Personas
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Personas are a documented set of archetypal users who are involved with a product, typically the product's users. Each persona has a name and a picture. They're supposed to give designers a sense that they are designing for specific people, not just generic, ill-defined users. Done well, this is exactly what personas do. The problem is, most teams build personas from the wrong kind of user information, or worse, base them on assumptions.
Saffer, Dan. Adaptive Path (2005). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
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InfoSourcing's Persona based documentation approach allows our technical writers to prioritize their writing tasks and document the product to end users, who is going to use the product ..."
Sarjapur, Harsha. Info Sourcing (2005). Resources>Documentation>User Centered Design>Personas
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As a company recognized by a number of publications and organizations for its ongoing commitment to a diverse workforce, Wachovia promotes diversity as a business imperative critical to the company's success. On Wachovia's web properties, the company tries to appeal to diverse segments through images of people of different races, ethnicities, and ages, reflecting the company's customer base. However, a recent usability test revealed that working off such demographics alone is not enough to translate diversity, and that building personas is the key to creating, not just representation, but relevancy.
Zhou, Yun and Cliff Anderson. Usability Professionals Association (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Personas
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Personas and the Technical Communicator
What's the problem with personas? They're a new concept to many communicators, and thus sufficiently unfamiliar to make them difficult to use. To help solve this problem, I developed a couple of personas to show you how it's done, and illustrate their implications for documentation.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>TC>User Centered Design>Personas
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Personas, Goals, and Emotional Design
When Don Norman's most recent book, Emotional Design, hit the shelves in early 2004, it sent a ripple through the user experience world. Norman introduced the idea that product design should address three different levels of cognitive and emotional processing: visceral, behavioral, and reflective. This idea seemed like old news to some and a revelation to others in the UX community. In either case, Norman's ideas, based on years of cognitive research, provide an articulated structure for modeling user responses to product and brand and a rational context for many intuitions long held by professional designers.
Reimann, Robert. UXmatters (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Emotions>Personas
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Personas, Participatory Design and Product Development: An Infrastructure for Engagement 
The design of commercial products that are intended to serve millions of people has been a challenge for collaborative approaches. The creation and use of fictional users, concrete representations commonly referred to as 'personas', is a relatively new interaction design technique. It is not without problems and can be used inappropriately, but based on experience and analysis it has extraordinary potential. Not only can it be a powerful tool for true participation in design, it also forces designers to consider social and political aspects of design that otherwise often go unexamined.
Grudin, Jonathan and John Pruitt. Microsoft (2002). Articles>User Centered Design>Usability>Personas
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Personas: Focusing on Getting the Design Right
The individual components of a persona are described and an example persona relating to the SecureCam case study is provided.
Meighan, Fiona. Apogee (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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' Personas' is an interaction design technique with considerable potential for software product development. In three years of use, our colleagues and we have extended Alan Cooperís technique to make Personas a powerful complement to other usability methods. After describing and illustrating our approach, we outline the psychological theory that explains why Personas are more engaging than design based primarily on scenarios. As Cooper and others have observed, Personas can engage team members very effectively. They also provide a conduit for conveying a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data, and focus attention on aspects of design and use that other methods do not.
Pruitt, John and Jonathan Grudin. Microsoft (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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Personas: Setting the Stage for Building Usable Information Sites
Personas are hypothetical archetypes, or 'stand-ins' for actual users that drive the decision making for interface design projects. Personas are not real people, but they represent real people throughout the design process. Personas are not 'made up'; they are discovered as a by-product of the investigative process.
Head, Alison J. Online Magazine (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
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Practicing Persona Development: an In-House Case Study 
As Technical Communicators, many of us were initiated into this industry with the oft-cited cliche, 'know thy audience.' But what does this really mean? To what extent must we 'know' our audience in order to deliver effective information products? The critical questions are, 'what tools and means can I use to sufficiently understand the needs of my audience? Rather than relying on the directives of Engineering and Marketing, how can I discover the true needs of my audience and develop a user-centered design? And how do I hone my skills at gathering and applying this crucial data?' One of the emerging trends in Technical Communications is to develop user 'personas' as a design tool. This paper presents 'real-world' advice and 'best practices' on using the persona methodology to design information products.
Leritz-Higgins, Sarah E. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design>Personas
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Reconciling Market Segments and Personas
Market segmentation and personas are two different techniques that are often perceived as conflicting methods, but they are actually complementary tools that organizations can use to design and sell successful products.
Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
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The Return on Investment (ROI) for Personas
For a variety of reasons, persona efforts tend to peter out rather than end in a managed, measured, and organized manner. Consultants are usually not paid to stick around long enough to manage the personas at the end of a project and in-house teams are usually more concerned with ramping up for the next project than they are with tidying up loose ends from the previous one. Being first-in/last-out on projects means that you will probably end up with responsibilities that straddle two projects. You will be completing your work on project A even after you have begun your work on project B. That is no simple task. It is certainly easier to simply move on to project B. However, we argue that an organized approach to measuring and managing the end of a project can yield significant benefits.
Light, Ann. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
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Site Personas and the Dialogue Process
Site Personas are analogous to User Personas. Whereas User Personas represent typical individuals in your target user base, together with goals and motivations, the Site Persona represents the site, embodying its brand and its goals. I often find it helpful to picture my web sites as information flowing both ways between the site and users. The Dialogue Process is a way to optimise your web site interactions by scripting them as conversations between your two types of persona.
Hunt, Ben. Web Design From Scratch (2005). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Personas
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Taking the "You" Out of User: My Experience Using Personas
Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Pyra - the company behind Blogger, shares her team's experience in the discovery of Alan Cooper and the use of personas. Through their practical application, she tells the tale of how a product cycle was turned on its ear as the team discovered they weren't anything like their user.
Hourihan, Meg. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Design>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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Teaming Up to Define Your Users
Demonstrates how technical communicators can be leaders in the effort to create thorough descriptions of a product's users.
Filippo, Elizabeth G. Intercom (2002). Design>User Centered Design>Assessment>Personas
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User Persona: Its Application and the Art of Stereotyping
I feel that creation of user persona is nothing but realistic stereotyping or a simplified outline of the user. The word 'realistic' is more important as realism can be achieved only through user study. (I am not referring to the fictional personas applicable in futuristic technologies). Humorists, cartoonists and filmmakers are gifted with the art of stereotyping. But they tend to exaggerate a lot. Therefore the personalities they render appear like caricatures. We must avoid caricatured user personas. While stereotyping, you generalize and oversimplify. And when you do that you pick or eliminate some details. That makes all the difference.
Katre, Dinesh S. Journal of HCI Vistas (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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User role models are compared in detail with the popular user modeling technique of personas. User roles offer a more compact, more focused means of capturing and exploring those aspects of users most relevant to interaction design. The advantages and limitations of the approaches are considered and a combined strategy is described.
Constantine, Larry L. Constantine and Lockwood (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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Using Personas to Create User Documentation
Personas and other user-modeling techniques are often solely discussed as tools for product definition and design, but they are useful tools in other arenas, as well. Technical writers responsible for creating user documentation can benefit greatly from a well-defined persona set, too.
Calde, Steve. Cooper Interaction Design (2005). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Personas
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Using Personas: Bringing Users Alive
How do we communicate what we know about the people who use our products in an engaging, efficient way? How do we get beyond statistics to a portrait of users that helps us use this information to make decisions?
Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Methods>Personas
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As we have pointed out before, understanding the user is a pre-requisite of high quality interface design, whether online or offline. This means taking the time to find out what motivates typical user groups, what they expect from a given site or application, and how they prefer to work (or play). The alternative to proper user profiling is simply plucking an imaginary 'user' out of the air - usually to add weight to personal preferences or prejudices. The latter situation often consists of a so-called expert dismissing design features because 'the user wouldn't like it', when he or she is really saying 'I don't like it'. This common reference to a single undefined 'user' conjures up amusing images of a God-like entity casting judgment on interfaces from on high. In the real world, as we know, things are a little more complex. If 'the user' is frequently invoked but never defined, it may be time to rethink your usability strategy. Of course, after profiling has taken place, or when talking in generalities, there is nothing wrong with 'the user' being used as a convenient shorthand. But during specific projects it is essential to think in terms of real people rather than abstracts. This approach creates both better design and makes usability more understandable, in concrete terms, for others involved in the development process.
Farrell, Tom. Frontend Infocentre (2001). Design>Usability>Methods>Personas
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Usability testing makes use of a lot of role-playing scenarios like this one, and many findings and design recommendations result from participants’ responses to these scenarios. But an over-reliance on role playing when testing a product and making design recommendations can have major downsides and risks
Peyrichoux, Isabelle. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Usability>Testing>Personas
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Using Persona Advocates to Develop User-Centric Intranets and Portals
One powerful design tool, personas, can help provide a framework for building Intranets that will satisfy a variety of needs. Effectively developed and used, personas enable Intranet teams to hone in on user needs and build interfaces and user experiences that end-user audiences can and will use.
McQueen, Howard. McQueen Consulting (2008). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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Accessibility in User-Centered Design: Personas
Personas are "hypothetical archetypes" of actual users. They are not real people, but they represent real people during the design process. A persona is a fictional characterization of a user. The purpose of personas is to make the users seem more real, to help designers keep realistic ideas of users throughout the design process.
UIaccess (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Personas
