Level: Basic
A well-built persona keeps design decisions grounded in a specific, representative user's real needs, rather than an abstract, undefined "everyone."
Base Personas on Real Research, Not Assumption
A persona built from actual user interviews or data is meaningfully more useful than one invented purely from internal assumptions about who the audience probably is.
Keep Personas Focused on Goals and Behavior, Not Just Demographics
What a persona is trying to accomplish and how they tend to behave matters more for design decisions than surface-level demographic details alone.
Use Personas Actively, Not Just as a One-Time Exercise
A persona document created once and never referenced again provides little ongoing value; actively checking design decisions against it is what makes the exercise genuinely useful.
Next step: Use the SeoWolf's Notepad to draft your initial user personas based on real research findings before design work begins.