History of personas

1. Who invented personas?
2. When did personas start?
3. Why are personas created?
4. What do you mean by personas?

Who invented personas?

Personas were informally developed by Alan Cooper in the early '80s as a way to empathize with and internalize the mindset of people who would eventually use the software he was designing.

When did personas start?

Focusing around a series of role-playing video games, Persona is a spin-off from Atlus' Megami Tensei franchise. The first entry in the series, Revelations: Persona, was released in 1996 for the PlayStation. The series has seen several more games since, with the most recent main entry being 2019's Persona 5 Royal.

Why are personas created?

The purpose of personas is to create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference. These representations should be based on qualitative and some quantitative user research and web analytics.

What do you mean by personas?

Personas are fictional characters, which you create based upon your research in order to represent the different user types that might use your service, product, site, or brand in a similar way. Creating personas helps the designer to understand users' needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.