Proto-persona
A proto-persona is a provisional customer profile built from a team's existing assumptions and knowledge, used as a starting point before primary research is done.
Also known as Provisional persona, Assumption persona
When should you use a proto-persona?
Proto-personas are a good first move when you have little or no research budget yet, or need to align a team quickly. They surface what everyone already believes about the customer, so those beliefs can be tested rather than silently assumed.
What is the risk of proto-personas?
They are guesses. The danger is treating a proto-persona as fact and building a roadmap on it. The point is to replace assumptions with evidence over time, promoting it into a research-based persona.
How do you turn a proto-persona into a real persona?
Connect it to actual customer signal: interviews, support tickets, sales calls and surveys. As evidence accumulates, confirm, correct or drop each assumption until the profile reflects reality.
Put it into practice
Proto-persona, in brief
A proto-persona is a provisional customer profile built from a team's assumptions and existing knowledge, used to align quickly and as a starting point before primary research replaces the guesses with evidence.
A proto-persona is based on assumptions; a customer persona is based on research. The goal is to graduate the former into the latter as evidence arrives.
Related terms
- Customer personaA customer persona is a research-based profile of a target customer that captures their goals, behaviours, pain points and context, so teams can make decisions with a specific person in mind.Read more
- Continuous discoveryContinuous discovery is the practice of maintaining a regular, ongoing habit of talking to customers and testing ideas throughout product development, rather than doing research only in occasional big projects.Read more
- Customer insightA customer insight is a non-obvious, evidence-backed understanding of customer behaviour or motivation that can change a decision, distinct from a raw data point or a single piece of feedback.Read more
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