Projects/Usability/HIG/Persona

Purpose

A persona is a representation of a fictitious user that includes a concise summary of characteristics of the user, their experience, goals and tasks, pain points, and environmental conditions. Personas describe the target users, giving a clear picture of how they're likely to use the system, and what they’ll expect from it.

The advantage of persona is a common understanding over the development team and the abstraction or dissociation from the own point of view. In contrast to the alternatives lead user(s), panel of real users or sociological milieus

Best Practice

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/Principles/KDE4_Personas