A user persona is a fictional character based on real data, designed to represent a specific segment of your audience. It helps you make product decisions through the user’s lens, considering their goals, needs, frustrations, and behaviors. Good personas are grounded in research and made to inform design and strategy.

WHAT A USER PERSONA IS NOT:

INTRODUCTION TO USER PERSONAS, BY FIGMA →

If you’re a designer, let’s be honest - it’s hard to resist jumping straight into visuals. We often rush to craft the best-looking solution, only to realize we’ve overlooked the most important part - who we’re actually designing for. Honestly, I’ve slipped up like that more times than I’d like to admit.

When you’re just starting out, you don’t even know what to focus on. Following a formal design process feels almost impossible. But gradually, you begin to notice patterns. The steps become clearer. You start making intentional decisions instead of just guessing. And eventually, it clicks - things begin to make sense.

One thing that’s become non-negotiable for me is defining a user persona - or sometimes more than one, depending on the project. But always keeping it minimal and purposeful is crucial. This step comes at the very beginning for a reason.

So, how do you actually start the right way?

When I first started designing, I thought I had to impress users. Transitioning from a background as an artist, and a graphic designer, was partially the reason for that, I believe.

Besides the formal education process and the books on concepts of product design I read at the beginning, the majority of my early exploration of UX/UI design came from internet articles. I started intensively going through shared case studies on platforms like Behance, Dribbble, or - even worse - browsing showcases of professional, polished designs from people who were already 10 steps ahead in their journey, without realizing the gap. Clean layouts, perfect grids, that signature visual flair.

This creates an even more distorted image of what product design should be, especially if you come from a design-only background and have never been involved in product development.

In fact, if I had to summarize the whole journey - in the beginning, creating basic designs feels like a lack of skill. So, you start adding more and more features, animations you find cool, or… whatever else seems impressive. Until eventually, you reach a point where you realize that a successful product lies in its simplicity - in returning to a minimal solution that only solves real problems instead of creating additional confusion.

And at some point, I finally realized that I had wasted enough time on unsuccessful projects - and the root cause of that was this: I’d been asking the wrong question all along. I kept thinking, “Will this design look good on my portfolio?” when I should’ve been asking, “Who is this even for?”

That’s when I decided to put the screen aside. I grabbed a pen and some paper and started writing down the people I imagined would be on the other side of this product. Not demographics or fancy metrics. Real people - how they think, what they feel, what annoys them, and what they’re secretly hoping to find.

It looked something like this:

Eventually, I cleaned it up. Turned it into a template I could use more easily. And then one day, I shared it online - not expecting much. But it started spreading. And now it’s been used by over 4,000 designers, product teams, early founders… people who, like me, just wanted to stop guessing and start designing with more clarity.

Of course, the whole process of user research is definitely more than this, it’s a much longer process - often counted in months of work, not hours. But this is the first step.

This User Persona Template is now available on Figma - something simple to help you slow down, ask better questions, and actually see the human on the other side of your product.

It’s not a magic fix. But it’s a start.

You’ll see what’s trendy everywhere. But first, learn what makes something timeless. These books explain that better than any blog post.

Until next time,