USER PERSONA — EVIDENCE AND DECISION TEMPLATE
Original worksheet. Checked 2026-10-27.
https://showmeyoursaas.com/articles/user-persona/
Reference: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona-types/

START WITH THE DECISION
Product / workflow:
Specific design or service decision:
Relevant user role:
Buyer or administrator role if different:
Audience and context included:
Contexts not yet investigated:

SOURCE REGISTER
Observation ID:
Date / permitted source pointer:
Recent task or observed behavior:
Exact observation (separate from interpretation):
Workaround / failure / constraint:
Counterexample:
Research access and retention arrangements:

PATTERN DRAFT
Pattern ID:
Claim:
Supporting observation IDs:
Contradicting observation IDs:
Alternative explanation:
What the current evidence cannot establish:

PERSONA
Descriptive role name:
Status: assumption-based proto-persona / research synthesis / other (explain)
Goal:
Behavior and context:
Constraints:
Workarounds:
Relevant role boundaries:
Counterexamples:
Unknowns:
For every consequential claim, add evidence IDs or label it an assumption.
Do not fill age, income, personality, or family fields just to decorate a profile.

DESIGN IMPLICATION
Proposal:
Persona claim IDs supporting it:
Why that implication is a hypothesis rather than a finding:
Task or evidence that could disprove it:
Participants and contexts to include:
Result:
Decision: keep / revise / investigate / stop
Owner and review trigger:

REVIEW CHECKLIST
Can another reviewer trace every important claim?
Are invented examples clearly distinguished from real observations?
Have buyer and user roles been conflated?
Are unsupported prevalence or market-size claims present?
Were counterexamples retained?
What contexts did recruitment miss?
Does the artifact influence a real question or decision?
Should new evidence split, revise, or retire this persona?
Keep private identifying details in the appropriate research system, not in a broadly shared planning artifact.