The Essence of a Successful Persona Project [UIE – Feb 17, 2010] – Personas are a flexible and powerful tool for user researchers. They’re also one of the most misunderstood. When done well, they ensure the team focuses on the needs and delights of their users. Like other effective user research techniques, personas deliver confidence and insights to the team. Personas help the team make important design decisions with a thorough understanding of who the users are, what they need, and when they need it. For the last few years, we’ve studied how a variety of design teams have tried to harvest the benefits of persona projects. We’ve explored several wildly successful persona projects and many that fell far short of their goals. We now better understand where the magic lies with personas — what the essence of a successful project is.