Personas

What is this?
A persona is a fictional person that represents the needs, desires, and motivations that your research has uncovered. Designers and marketers routinely use personas to focus their products and services on what matters most to their target population. You can also use personas to analyze data and generate insights.

When should I use this?
Use personas when you need a meaningful archetype to use as inspiration for policy solutions and to test your ideas against. 

More about this...
Personas are an effective way to keep your work focused on the people you’re designing for after the research phase is over. You can also use personas to communicate the challenge you’re researching to funders or policymakers. It’s important to create personas based on information gathered through interviews, observations, and quantitative analysis rather than assumptions to avoid beginning your design process off in the wrong direction. It’s often more helpful to create multiple personas to test your designs against. Here’s a persona template to get you started.