Based on data that we’ve gathered through user research, Spirit Softworks can develop user profiles or personas—which are fictional user archetypes—that represent a few important classes of users whose goals and needs a specific digital product serves. Each user profile or persona embodies a specific class of users who

• 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

Benefits of Using User Profiles or Personas

User profiles or personas can help you to

• understand your product’s target users and their goals
• ascertain what features would make your product useful to them
• decide what usage patterns your product should support
• determine the appropriate scope of your product’s functionality

Types of Personas

The personas for a specific digital product generally include the following types of personas:

• primary personas—which represent your 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 your product’s 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