Personas
I have read about this for a number of years, I have never actually used it. hopefully I'll end up in a more structured development environment where we can try things like this.
Better Living Through Software - Personas
At Microsoft, we sometimes use “personas” when designing features and writing specs. A “persona” is an imaginary character we invent to embody a set of characteristics for a particular target group of users. For example, “Jane is an MBA who has a job in the IT department at a major insurance company. She writes code, but does not consider herself a 'coder' as much as a business analyst. She... (and so on)” Then the whole product team runs around citing Jane's preferences when debating the relative merits of a particular design decision.
At Microsoft, we sometimes use “personas” when designing features and writing specs. A “persona” is an imaginary character we invent to embody a set of characteristics for a particular target group of users. For example, “Jane is an MBA who has a job in the IT department at a major insurance company. She writes code, but does not consider herself a 'coder' as much as a business analyst. She... (and so on)” Then the whole product team runs around citing Jane's preferences when debating the relative merits of a particular design decision.