Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms used across Persona Pal.

Persona

A persona is a research-based, semi-fictional profile of a type of user or customer — their goals, behaviours, pain points and context — used to make product, design, marketing and sales decisions for real people instead of a vague “average user”.

UX persona

A persona focused on how people use a product: their jobs-to-be-done, workflows, decision authority, pain points, permissions, and technical and AI-adoption profiles.

Marketing / buyer persona

A persona focused on how people buy: goals, challenges, the buying journey, and the messaging that resonates. See What is a UX persona vs a marketing persona?

Jobs to be done (JTBD)

The underlying tasks or goals a person is “hiring” a product to accomplish. Framing personas around JTBD keeps the focus on outcomes rather than demographics.

Customer organisation archetype

A profile of a type of customer organisation (for example, Big Bank or Healthcare Provider) — its goals, challenges, systems and how it tends to buy and deploy. Used to tailor setup and messaging by segment.

Persona variant

A context-specific version of a single persona that records how it changes for a particular customer type, via overridden values and “what changes” notes — without duplicating the persona. See Persona variants for customer segments.

Launchpad

A recommended product setup generated from a customer archetype — modules, content packs, role-based dashboards tied to personas, and a rollout plan. The bridge from “what kind of customer is this?” to “how do we set them up?”

AI agent (as a persona)

An automated “user” modelled as a first-class profile, with its autonomy, oversight, guardrails and permissions — so teams can design for AI actors the same way they design for people.