Personas bring focus, build empathy, create efficiency, and contribute to better decision-making. So what’s a persona?

A persona is an imagined user who represents a specific user group or segment of the market. Personas may be fictitious, but their impact is very real. Understanding them allows for smart site architecture and design, and ultimately allows for the fulfillment of customers’ unmet needs. 

For certain projects, establishing multiple user personas allows us to create a feature value matrix and then prioritize the functionality that’s needed. From there, we can create a high-level site architecture that reflects users’ goals and behavior. Next step: product and usability strategies to allow for a seamless user experience.