The best personas are really conceptual models, which help you to digest the user research in a coherent way. They put a name and face to an observed pattern of behavior.
It’s easy to see the surface elements that we’ve used throughout history to separate and shallowly categorize one another — race, age, where we live, what we like to eat, and so forth. It’s much harder to uncover what binds us together: our shared goals, motivations, and behaviors. But to make sound personas, this is exactly what we must observe and record.The differences between personas must be based on these deeper issues — what people do (actions or projected actions), and why they do them (goals and motivations) — and not as much on who people are. It’s not that knowing who people are isn’t important, it just isn’t as important for personas.
Dan Saffer, "Persona Non Grata," Adaptive Path, 17 Aug 2005 via Tomalak's
