Visualize the Test Participant

The specific characteristics that make up the user profile will of course depend on your product and the tasks you want participants to perform in the test. Tie the main objective of your test to the user profile. Start by visualizing and describing the person you want to be in the testing room with you. This is a simple narrative sentence or short paragraph, such as this:

We want to find out where in the process of booking a room at one of our hotels travelers meet obstacles to completing reservations /the test objective/. The user of our web site reservation system travels at least a feiv times a year and stays in a hotel each time. He or she typically books his or her ou>n travel online, especially

leisure travel. He or she may belong to hotel rewards programs.

While this is rather general, you can probably conjure up the image of someone who might fit this description. That's exactly the idea: See a person rather than a list of qualifications. Now, on to expanding your understanding of the target audience and documenting it.