User Persona

Also called Buyer Persona

A semi-fictional profile of a target user or buyer, capturing their goals, context, and frustrations, used to keep the whole team building for a real, specific person.

Why it matters

Personas keep a team from building for a vague everyone, which usually means no one. Grounded in real research they sharpen decisions; invented from thin air they mislead, so the research behind them matters.

For example

The team builds for 'Priya, a 32-year-old solo accountant who hates spreadsheets', keeping every decision anchored to a real, specific user.

Go deeper

Personas Make Users Memorable Nielsen Norman Group · article The clearest definition of what a persona actually is and is not, from the field that invented the term. It draws the line between a persona built from real research clusters and a persona built from a marketer's imagination, which is exactly the line our short answer is drawing. Open nngroup.com →

Related terms

Also in Starting Up

See how founders actually handle this on Building the product, part of the Starting Up hub.

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