--- title: "Persona" url: "https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/persona" language: "en" description: "What is a persona in UX design? A plain-language explanation with an example and practical tips. Learn how to base personas on real research data." published: "2026-10-14T09:50:32+02:00" updated: "2026-10-14T13:01:57+02:00" --- # Persona A persona is a fictional person, grounded in real research, who represents a typical group of users. It helps teams make decisions from those people’s point of view. - **Buchstabe:** P UX glossary # Persona A persona is a fictional person, grounded in real research, who represents a typical group of users. It helps teams make decisions from those people’s point of view. Imagine a team building an app for a bakery’s delivery service. Every meeting is full of talk about “the users,” but everyone in the room pictures someone different: one person thinks of the student ordering late at night, another of the family that wants fresh rolls on Sunday morning. The discussions go in circles because nobody knows who the decisions are actually for. ## Explained simply A persona is a made-up person who stands in for a real group of users. They have a name, often a photo, and above all goals, habits and typical problems. Those traits don’t come from imagination, though. They come from [user research](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/user-research): interviews, observation and surveys with real people. Think of an experienced bookseller who, when placing an order, has “the crime fiction fans who drop by every Friday” in mind. She isn’t thinking of one specific customer but of a pattern she knows well. A persona makes that kind of pattern visible and tangible for an entire team. The method was popularized by software designer Alan Cooper. By his own account, he worked with an early form of personas back in the 1980s and described the method in the late 1990s in his book *The Inmates Are Running the Asylum*. ## What belongs in a good persona At its core, a persona answers three questions: What does this person want to achieve? In what situation do they use the product? And what gets in their way? The Nielsen Norman Group advises, in essence, to judge every detail by whether it influences a design decision. A name and a photo make the persona memorable. A favorite color or star sign only helps if it actually relates to the product. A few personas are usually enough. Merge characters that are similar, and drop groups that barely matter for the product. If you don’t have research data yet, you can create a so-called proto-persona. That’s a team assumption, clearly labeled as such, that you check against real data later. ## An example Back to the bakery delivery app. Before, the requirement reads: “People want to order quickly.” That could mean anything. After interviews with customers, the team creates the persona “Jana, 38, two kids, orders from bed on her phone the night before.” Jana wants to place the same order as last week in under a minute, and she often remembers only just before the order cutoff. Now it’s obvious what to build first: an “Order again” feature and an evening reminder. The question in meetings is no longer “What do people want?” but “Does this help Jana?” ## Common misconceptions A persona is not a marketing segment. Marketing target groups often describe age, income and location. For design, what counts is goals, situations and behavior. A second misconception: that personas are ever finished. Good personas get updated whenever new insights come in from interviews or [usability testing](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/usability-testing). You can read more in [What Are UX Personas and Why Does Every Team Need Them?](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/blog/what-are-ux-personas-and-why-every-team-needs-them) ## In practice - **Research first, write second.** Talk to real people before you write a persona. Without data, it mostly reflects your team’s assumptions. - **Every detail has to decide something.** Cut anything that doesn’t answer a design question. A short, clear persona gets read; a ten-page document probably won’t. - **Bring the persona into everyday work.** Put it up where people can see it, or mention it by name in reviews. A persona that disappears into a folder won’t change a single decision. ## Related terms [Jobs to be Done](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/jobs-to-be-done), [Journey Map](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/journey-map), [User Research](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/user-research) ## Sources - [Alan Cooper: The Origin of Personas. Cooper, 2003](https://www.cooper.com/journal/2003/08/the_origin_of_personas.html) - [Taylor Dykes: Personas Make Users Memorable. Nielsen Norman Group, 2025](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona/) ## More terms [ ### A/B Testing An A/B test is an experiment that shows two versions of a page or element at the same time to randomly split groups of visitors. It lets you decide with real data which version works better. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/a-b-testing) [ ### ARIA ARIA is a W3C standard that adds roles, states and properties to HTML. It tells screen readers what an element is and how it currently behaves. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/aria) [ ### Accessibility Accessibility means designing websites, apps and digital documents so that everyone can use them, including people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/accessibility) [ ### Affordance An affordance describes what action an object makes possible and whether people can recognize it: a button invites you to press it, a handle invites you to pull. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/affordance) [ ### Alt Text Alt text is a short text version of an image, stored in the HTML alt attribute. Screen readers read it aloud so people who can’t see the image get the same information. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/alt-text) [ ### Atomic Design Atomic Design is a method for building user interfaces from small, reusable building blocks, from single elements like buttons all the way up to complete pages. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/atomic-design) [ ### BFSG The BFSG, Germany’s Accessibility Strengthening Act, has required many companies since 28 June 2025 to make certain products and digital services, such as online shops, accessible. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/bfsg) [ ### Card Sorting Card sorting is a research method in which people sort terms written on cards into groups. It shows you how they mentally organize content, so you can plan navigation that makes sense to them. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/card-sorting) [ ### Cognitive Load Cognitive load is the mental effort it takes to understand and use an interface. The less unnecessary thinking a design demands, the easier the actual task becomes. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/cognitive-load) [ ### Color Vision Deficiency A color vision deficiency means someone has a harder time telling certain colors apart than most people. The most common type is red-green deficiency. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/color-vision-deficiency) [ ### Contextual Inquiry Contextual inquiry is a research method where you observe and interview people in their real work environment. It shows you how they actually get tasks done, not just how they describe it. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/contextual-inquiry) [ ### Contrast Ratio The contrast ratio describes how much two colors differ in brightness, such as text and background. WCAG requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text. ](https://www.insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/contrast-ratio)