user-personas

name	user-personas
description	Creates research-backed user personas with JTBD, pain points, gains, and unexpected behavioral insights. Use when building personas from survey or interview data, or segmenting users to inform product decisions. Triggers on: user persona, user profile, customer segment, jobs-to-be-done, JTBD, persona creation, user segmentation, target user, who are our users.

User Personas

Core Philosophy

Personas are not marketing archetypes. They're decision tools. A good persona answers: who are we optimizing for when we have to make a trade-off? If your personas are interchangeable or describe everyone equally, they're useless.

Ground every insight in actual research data. A persona invented in a workshop is worse than no persona — it gives false confidence for wrong decisions.

When to Use

• After user interviews or surveys — to synthesize findings into actionable profiles
• Before defining product scope — to force explicit prioritization of which user to serve
• When roadmap debates stall — to tie features back to specific user needs with evidence
• When user-discovery is complete and needs to feed into a PRD or strategy document

Workflow

1. Gather and Read the Research Data

Before writing anything, read all available inputs: interview transcripts, survey responses, support tickets, behavioral analytics, NPS comments. If no data exists, run user-discovery first — don't create fictional personas.

2. Identify Patterns, Not Individuals

Look for recurring combinations of:

• Goals: What outcome are they ultimately trying to achieve?
• Context: When and in what environment do they use the product?
• Blockers: What consistently prevents them from achieving their goal?
• Workarounds: What do they do today in the absence of a better solution?
• Trigger events: What causes them to start looking for a solution?

3. Define 3 Personas (Not More)

More than 3 personas is usually a sign you're describing individuals, not segments. Each persona must be:

• Distinct: Different primary goal or context, not just different demographics
• Grounded: At least 3 data points from actual users to support each claim
• Actionable: If two features conflict, this persona tells you which to prioritize

For each persona:

Field	Content
Name + Role	Memorable name, role/title, key characteristics
Primary JTBD	One sentence: "When [context], I want to [goal] so I can [outcome]"
Top 3 pain points	Specific obstacles — frequency and severity matter
Top 3 desired gains	Concrete outcomes they'd pay for or switch for
One unexpected insight	Something counterintuitive the data revealed about their behavior
Product fit	How the product addresses their needs — and where it falls short

4. Validate Against Data

Cross-check each persona claim: can you point to 3+ users who exhibit this behavior? If not, downgrade to a hypothesis and flag it.

5. Define the Primary Persona

One persona must be explicitly primary — the one you optimize for when trade-offs arise. State why.

Output Format

## User Personas — [Product Name]

### Primary Persona: [Name]
- Role: [Title / Context]
- JTBD: When [situation], I want to [goal] so I can [outcome].
- Pain points: [1] / [2] / [3]
- Desired gains: [1] / [2] / [3]
- Unexpected insight: [Counterintuitive behavioral finding]
- Product fit: [What works] / [What's missing]

### Persona 2: [Name]
[Same structure]

### Persona 3: [Name]
[Same structure]

### Prioritization Note
Primary persona: [Name]. Rationale: [Why this segment is the optimization target]

Antipatterns

• Demographic personas: Defining personas by age, gender, or geography without a behavioral or motivational basis. Demographics don't predict decisions — jobs-to-be-done do.
• Consensus personas: Created in a workshop by voting on guesses. This is fiction with professional packaging.
• Too many personas: 6+ personas means you're describing everyone and optimizing for no one.
• No primary designation: If all personas are equal, trade-off decisions still get made by whoever argues loudest.
• Static personas: Revisit personas when new research arrives. A persona that's 18 months old may no longer reflect your actual user base.