 Today we're going to be talking about Proto Personas. A Proto Persona is a fictional character that represents a user group for your product or service and the objective is to gain a deeper understanding of the users or customers that you're building for. Typically made up of behaviors, pain points, needs and goals, tools and devices, demographics. All that information about a Proto Persona is actually based on the team's assumption and their experience and knowledge of the customer or user base. And why would you choose this over a real Persona? As I mentioned before, Proto Personas are based on assumptions and existing knowledge. Therefore, you don't have to do quite as much user research and can really quickly execute on your first initial concept of the product or feature. It's a really good way to start to get group alignment. And finally, it's a good way to build empathy for the problem you're trying to solve. So you have a more user centric approach to your design process. So when should you actually think about creating a Proto Persona? When user documentation is messy and organized and really hard to decipher, you have an unclear picture of your target audience. Discussions about the user are very vague and nonspecific. When the team needs a more human-centered approach and of course when the stakeholders have lack of agreement and alignment to what the customers really want. So now that you know more about Proto Personas, let's figure out what we need to actually run this place. First, you need about three to five people, about 60 minutes of prep time and about 90 minutes to actually run the workshop. So who do you need to run this place? You need a combination and diverse cross-section of skills. So anybody that's close to the customer, it could be customer service, sales, marketing and even user researchers. You definitely need your decision-making in the room and a designated facilitator. A word of caution, Proto Personas are a great way to kick off your UX project. However, it only scratches the surface of user research and really should not replace a proper persona study. It's critical to validate the Proto Personas that you've done on an ongoing basis. Okay, so I hope that was helpful. If you want to read more about Proto Personas and actually how to do it, please check out the link below. There are tips, templates and a step-by-step guide into running this persona play. And lastly, if you really like the template, please let me know so I can make more. So how do you actually build a Proto Persona and what goes into it? Cool. Peace out.