User modeling begins with an in-depth analysis of patterns in the user data that we elicited during user research. Using that data as a guide, Team Spirit collaborates with members of your product team to develop a set of clearly differentiated personas, or fictional user archetypes, that represent a few important classes of users whose goals and needs you intend your digital product to serve. Each persona in the set embodies a specific class of target users who

• “Good design must primarily serve people.”
  —Thomas Watson, Jr.
  have common roles, goals, and motivations
• have similar skills and characteristics
• share common mental models
• work in similar contexts
• share a similar range of behavior patterns
• typically perform certain tasks

Types of Personas

When developing a set of personas, we typically create the following types of personas:

• primary personas—which represent a product’s primary group of target users, whose unique needs require a particular set of features and interactions
• secondary personas—which represent other groups of users whose needs you want to accommodate, for whom the user experience for the primary persona is generally satisfactory, and who require only minor changes or additions to the feature set
• supplemental personas—which represent users whose needs are fully satisfied by the user experience that meets the needs of the primary and secondary personas
• negative personas—whose needs your product cannot satisfy without diminishing its utility or the usability of its user experience for the other personas

Using Personas

Personas help Team Spirit and your product team to

• define the target users for whom you are developing your digital product
• understand these users and their goals
• ascertain what features would make your product useful to them
• decide what usage patterns it should support
• determine the appropriate scope of your product’s functionality

Once the personas that Team Spirit produces during user modeling undergo a cycle of review and revision, they provide the basis for analyzing user requirements during user requirements definition.