Creating a User Persona (Free Templates)

Creating a User Persona

The start of the User Experience (UX) Design process involves user research. It’s the process of data collection that provides an in-depth, holistic view of your user’s motivations, behaviours, and ways of interacting with your product.

A UX Designer will always rely on user research that can be compiled from a combination of one-on-one interviews, card sorting, surveys or personas.

Arguably, user research is the most important component of UX Design; the user research phase is vital in crafting delightful customer experiences that are user-friendly and human-centric.

One method of user research is the creation of a user persona.

A user persona is:

• An archetype or a fictional representation of people researched
• A group of people with similar traits represented as a single person
• A personified expression of a noticeable trend

Create your own user persona with our free persona template.

The Value of User Personas

By crafting the right user persona, you can visualise exactly what visitors are doing on your website. This gives a greater understanding of users and provides more insight than a survey for example.

Personas help drive design and feature decisions, and their benefit can be summarised as:

• Helping identify a user’s needs
• Highlighting a customer’s desires
• Focusing on your audience’s challenges
• Creating a User Persona

There are two types of personas; lean (proto) and detailed. Proto-personas engage stakeholders and efficiently communicate a user’s story. Detailed personas are becoming less and less common as they require significant validation and take longer to develop than a proto-persona.

Simplified steps to creating a user persona:

1. Compile data and insights from your research
2. Group your findings into a spreadsheet or create an Affinity Map
3. Identify behavioural traits and the demographics of your users to understand how they interact with your product

Have a go at creating your own persona. Download template here.

Developing UX artefacts and conducting user research is a fundamental UX Design principle ensuring UX Designers are better placed to remove any assumptions and biases, validate a problem statement, and thoroughly test a hypothesis. Detailed user personas remind UX Designers to keep their user at the centre of their work.

Get hands-on and learn how to create a user persona and more. Launch your career in UX Design today.