What is the core of a persona?

A persona is the personified representation of a user or client group. Within design thinking this persona will be centered around coherent need-statements. The persona as method has initially been developed in marketing where personas were initially used as representations of demographic segments (e.g.: personas called “dinks” – double income no kidsetc.). Persona´s in design thinking are distinctively different because they are not built around demographic or socio-economic attributes but around needs – **the design thinking persona does not represent the 32-Year old married woman, but represents people who need something,**e.g. sth. they can consume with one hand and without getting their hands dirty, while strolling the textile market (because they are not only hungry/thirsty, but also want to touch the textiles and can’t do that with occupied or dirty hands).

“A design thinking persona is the personified representation of a need-statement.”

We might put a name and face and age and family background to the persona, that represents all these people, because that will make it easier to relate to the need-statement in the process of designing a solution that fits their need-statement. But the common characteristic is not the age or marital status – Imagine the following two persons:

1. 1Clean-free-hand-hungry Fred: He is single and barely 19-Years old
2. 2Clean-free-hand-thirsty Veronica: She is 75-Years old, widowed and proud grandma of 8 grandchildren

You might have both of them, Fred and Veronica represented by the same persona. You might decide to depict this persona as a 35-Years old pan-sexual transvestite in an open relationship. Why can the 35-Year old represent both the teen and the granny? Because it´s not about age or marital status, the persona is centered around the clean-free-hand-hungry-&-thirsty-need-statement.

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