What do personas represent according to UX design principles?

In UX design principles, personas represent fictional users' goals and characteristics. They are created based on user research and data, serving as archetypes that embody the needs, behaviors, and objectives of real users. By developing these personas, designers can gain insight into who their users are, what challenges they face, and how they interact with products or services.

This approach allows design teams to keep user needs at the forefront of the design process, ensuring that the solutions they create effectively address those needs. Personas help to guide design decisions by providing a clear reference for user focus, enhancing empathy towards users, and fostering alignment within the design team and stakeholders about whom they are designing for.

Creating personas based solely on real users would limit the breadth of representation and insight that can be garnered, while defining them as a company's target market is too broad and doesn't capture individual user nuances. Additionally, associating personas with specific design features misses the essence of what personas are intended for, which is to understand user characteristics rather than to dictate design outputs.