The word persona has different meanings, depending on the context. For web design, usability, and web content, a persona is a hypothetical user or reader. The persona is a made-up person. It’s an archetype or model of an individual in the targeted audience and is based on details gathered from real people. Part of developing a persona involves finding a picture of someone who looks like your typical reader.
Alan Cooper first introduced the design tool called a persona in his book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Sams, 2009). Personas are now a popular tool used for usability, Web design, and other formats where it’s important to understand the audience. A persona is a hypothetical user, a model or archetype, based on information and details collected from real people.
After you have gathered all the information you need about your audience, you can easily create the persona to help you stay on track and write to a specific type of person. You just need to create a short bio for that hypothetical person. You also need to find an image representative of what your persona looks like.
You can use the following template to develop your own persona.
