Persona's Defined

In the world of website development a persona refers to the description of a fictitious person that is very similar to an actual human that would visit your website.
Personas are typically given a real name so that the development team can refer to them as a real person.  The characteristics given to the persona paint a picture of what you would expect to see if someone fitting that description were using your website. 

Using only one persona to describe all the users for your website would be an over-generalization.  It is common to have several personas, each describing a different type of interaction and a different type of person that would use your website.

The approach of using personas allows a team to share a consistent understanding of who there users are that are going to work with the website being developed.  Personas also give clients and developers some common ground to help relate to the business need with the technical solution.  In a sense this provides a "human element" that helps the development team empathize and identify with the end user.  For the same reason it is common for the persona to be given a photo of someone similar to the persona.

The more detailed a persona can be, the better.  However, even a simple persona is helpful. 
Here's an example...

Kathy is a 30 year old business professional who is always on-the-go.  Kathy has Internet access wherever she goes and is quite comfortable with computers.  As a result her interest and time available to research new information is limited.

The development team can then infer that the following considerations should be made when building a website Kathy would use:
- be concise and straight forward so Kathy doesn't have to hunt around for what she wants
- it's okay to use familiar interface elements such as clicking column names to sort data, Kathy is probably familiar with this
- consider providing mobile content so that Kathy has access to the website from her Blackberry

Of course, this is a simplified example, but hopefully you get the point.

More information on personas is available here:

• Wikipedia
• Usability.gov
  

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