Persona and persona descriptions defined

Jared Spool has written an insightful article on personas. Or…I guess in reality, he’s writing about the difference between a persona and the resulting persona description/document.

My goal isn’t merely to rehash what he has stated already in his blog. The main purpose of my post is to define personas and persona documents for the sake of this blog’s posterity. However, I can’t help but be just a little inspired by his post in forming my definitions.

A persona is an imaginary person constructed in the minds of designers.

Everyone from writers to designers to usability professionals to bloggers, use personas. They give the creator a sense of whom they’re creating for. The persona ideally represents the average user or goal user for the intended product, sometimes a specific “much reach” user. In developing user interfaces the persona gives the designer a sense of the type of person that will be using the interface.

In Jared’s article, he makes the point that persona descriptions, just like mission statements, vision statements, positioning statements and etc., are only the result of a meaningful process. They are not, in and of themselves, that meaningful.

Persona descriptions are merely the documented persona.

Like all good brainstorming sessions that produce intensely scrutinized guides and/or statements, the brainstorming is the real magic. Read Jared’s post, Personas are NOT a Document, to get a much more seasoned and authoritative description.