Personas
At Microsoft, we sometimes use ?personas? when designing features and writing specs. A ?persona? is an imaginary character we invent to embody a set of characteristics for a particular target group of users. For example, ?Jane is an MBA who has a job in the IT department at a major insurance company. She writes code, but does not consider herself a ‘coder’ as much as a business analyst. She… (and so on)? Then the whole product team runs around citing Jane’s preferences when debating the relative merits of a particular design decision.
There is some controversy internally about how useful personas are. Real people always trump imaginary people, so personas become less useful when ready access to customers is available. And it is questionable how successful a product can be without ready access to customers, personas or not. And personas can easily become caricatures or stereotypes that don’t really accurately represent anyone. It is a lot easier to do personas wrong than it is to use them in a way that adds value.