Persona

A fictional, named character invented to stand in for a typical member of one of your audiences.

A persona gives a fictional face and a name to an otherwise abstract group, so that instead of designing for "the procurement segment" you're designing for "Dana, who has forty-five minutes and three competing quotes open in other tabs." Good personas are grounded in real user research rather than made up whole cloth. They're a tool for empathy and decision-making.

A variation on a persona is an archetype, which instead of reflecting a fictional person focuses more on the mindset within that person, which helps illustrate the different and sometimes competing expectations for different groups of people.

For example, a university may have a persona named Pete who represents the parent of a potential student. However, they may fall into multiple archetypes: "Parent," "Alumni" (if they went to school at the same university), or "Community Member" (if they work in the community in an industry served by the university).