We are unique individuals, but typically not so special as consumers. We easily fall into all kinds of classifications, which we share with many other people. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you risk-averse, or a risk taker?
• Do you like to try new things, or prefer to stick with what you know?
• How sensitive are you to the cost of products?
• Are you a sports fan?
• Do you prefer coffee shops to bars?
• Which ice cream do you prefer, vanilla or chocolate?
• Would you rather tour a foreign country on your own, or join a guided tour?

It is highly likely that you will not have any problem answering these binary questions, but you should not worry about your individuality. It is common to group people by common traits, attributes, and interests, and when it comes to commerce, companies want to understand which groups are most likely to purchase their product, and why.

The persona methodology is credited to Alan Cooper, who wrote about it in his 1998 book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Back then, it was difficult to explain why interface design matters to business and engineering executives. Overtime, personas were found to be effective in helping executives make the connection between investing in better user experience and increased profits.

Audience research activities, combined with the information that designers collected up to this point in the project, guide the creation of personas. A single persona typically maps to a specific audience segment. Depending on the product, designers create a few personas, and the entire collection serves as a representation for the product's audience.

Personas reduce the anonymity of a faceless statistically-compiled market audience, and help establish a mindset focused on real people. A product strategy that is shaped by personas leads to produce design objectives that prioritize simplification and intuitive use.

A persona is not a person, but a generalization of an entire audience segment. It is a design artifact, which is used by designers to capture research-based qualitative and quantitative forms, the emotions, goals, motivations, and habits of a hypothetical user of the product. It is a tool that helps explain to everyone involved in a product design project why a particular design approach is appropriate to the types of clients represented by the persona.

As an analytical model, a persona is a tool that helps designers aggregate common behavioral traits and product-use patterns associated with major audience segments. Personas contribute to the overall design process in several ways, and at the start of a project, they help focus experience strategy on users' needs and desires.

Occasionally, those who are deeply involved in product planning and development become absorbed in adding features and capabilities to their product as a means of improving its competitive position in the market. Consequently, they lose sight of customers who will be using the end result. This is obvious in products that are complicated and difficult to use. Digital wrist watches of the type that predates the smart watches are a good case in point.

The following example features an experience common to digital watches, which is why I made some tweaks to the product and brand names. For the most part, the watches construction quality is decent, they are relatively inexpensive, and they pack an impressive amount of features.

The Explorer VI has five buttons--two on the left and three on the right. The watch is infused with features, including an altimeter, chronograph, countdown timer, date, lap timer, thermometer, alarm, and a glow light to view all if there is darkness.

The product's operating manual has 46 pages. The following figure shows one of these pages--a seven-step instruction on how to calibrate the altimeter. It is difficult to imagine anyone performing this task without closely following the manual, and it is unlikely they will consult the manual on one of the watch's numerous functions, while diving or climbing a mountain. In short, the target audience segment for this product--people who are engaged in intensive outdoor activities--will have a difficult time getting the product offers.

However, what if the team that designs products such as the Explorer VI had a design tool that helps keep the product's user front and center throughout the design process?