persona-builderlisted

# Persona Builder A persona is a concise, believable portrait of a key user segment — a tool that keeps a team designing for real people with real goals instead of a vague "average user" (which is really everyone, i.e. no one). A good persona is a decision aid: when someone asks "would Maya actually use this?", the persona should be vivid and specific enough to answer. The main failure modes are worth naming up front, because this skill exists to avoid them: - **Personas invented from imagination.** A made-up persona launders assumptions into something that looks like evidence and is worse than none. Personas should come from research — interviews, support tickets, analytics, sales/CS knowledge, existing user data. When real research doesn't exist, say so, label the result a **provisional/assumption-based persona**, and frame it as a hypothesis to validate, not fact. - **Demographic trivia instead of behavior.** Age, gender, and a stock photo rarely change a design decision. What the person is trying to accomplish, why, what gets in their way, and how they work does. Lead with goals and behavior. - **Too many personas.** Each one you add fragments the team's focus. Aim for the 3–4 segments that matter most; it's better to serve the primary audiences well than to model everyone. ## How to build personas ### 1. Ground them in evidence Start from whatever the user actually has: user interviews, usability sessions, survey data, analytics, support/sales ins