A persona.A whole worldinside.
INSIDE A PERSONA
A screen is never just a screen. It meets someone’s knowledge, attention, expectations and feelings.
Step insideONE MOMENT, EIGHT STOPS
Between seeing a screen and clicking, a lot happens.
Scroll, and the brain turns to each stop. Every stop shows what it looked like inside Maria’s run.
01 — SCREEN TRIAGE
What kind of place is this?
Before deciding what to do, the persona recognizes the page: its patterns, its structure, how much there is to take in. A familiar checkout and an unfamiliar dashboard are very different starting points.
IN MARIA’S RUN · HOW SHE READ EACH SCREEN
22 STEPS
- Home page · 9
- Text · 2
- Form · 2
- Search results · 9
02 — PERCEPTION
What actually gets noticed?
The persona does not take in everything. Some details attract attention. Others are overlooked, or understood in a way the interface never intended.
IN MARIA’S RUN · NEVER NOTICED
The three-line menu icon, top right
14 OF 22 STEPS
“It looks like just a drawing, and I don’t know what it does.”
03 — WHO THE PERSON IS
What do I already know?
Existing knowledge, skills and mental models shape how the persona reads an interface. That foundation stays fixed during the test — the experience changes, the person does not.
Maria Aparecida, 54
Administrative assistant · Contagem, Brazil · on her phone
WHAT SHE BELIEVES
“If I don’t understand what a button does, I don’t press it — I look for another way.”
“Whoever asks for extra data wants to sell something later.”
WHEN SHE GETS STUCK
She texts her daughter
04 — MEMORY RETRIEVAL
What helps me make sense of this?
Relevant facts and experiences come forward. What happened earlier in the session, and the beliefs it created, help the persona read this moment — right or wrong.
IN MARIA’S RUN · A MEMORY COMES FORWARD
STEP 07
“I’ll put the two of us here, under adults.”
STEP 08
“I’ll press plus once more, so it’s me and my husband.”
Confident — “because the button did exactly that when I used it before.”
05 — DECISION
What should I do next?
The persona chooses an action from what it noticed and remembered — and commits to a prediction about what will happen when it does.
IN MARIA’S RUN · STEP 14
“I’ll check pool first, because that matters to both of us.”
HER PREDICTION
Pool gets checked, and the list updates to places with a pool — without losing the city.
06 — THE SCREEN RESPONDS
Did that do what I expected?
The action happens in a real browser. The page changes, a destination opens, or nothing seems to happen. This part lives outside the brain — the persona has to make sense of it.
IN MARIA’S RUN · STEP 16
EXPECTATION BROKENSHE EXPECTED
The filters window closes and the search she had comes back.
THE SCREEN
Didn’t change.
Six of her 22 predictions broke like this. Each one moved something inside her.
07 — FEELINGS
How does that leave me feeling?
The outcome meets the expectation. Frustration, self-confidence, trust in the product and patience shift — and the next action starts from that state. Friction does not reset between clicks.
IN MARIA’S RUN · STEP BY STEP
“Very frustrated, tired and unsure — but relieved not to risk choosing or paying for the wrong thing.”
08 — WHAT STAYS IN MEMORY
What will I carry into the next moment?
Experiences become session memories. The next screen is never quite a fresh start: what happened here travels with the persona — all the way to the moment she stops.
IN MARIA’S RUN · STEP 22 OF 22
GAVE UP
“The house and the pool don’t show up, and these filters don’t work. I’ll leave it for later and ask my daughter for help.”
Her profile says that when she gets stuck, she texts her daughter. Twenty-two steps in, that is exactly what she did.