AI-Powered User Personas for UX Discovery
Company
Travel + Leisure Co.
Role
User Experience Design Intern
Timeline
Summer 2025
Tools
Figma, AI tools
{ THE FRICTION }
{ THE OPPORTUNITY }
User personas live as static artifacts inside a Figma file. Designers manually sift through text-heavy documentation to find specific insights during the wireframing and ideation phases.
This creates a friction for the product team because the personas are statics instead of interactive, dynamic, and human-like.
{ THE CHALLENGE }
THE OPPORTUNITY
User personas live as static artifacts inside a Figma file.
Designers manually sift through text-heavy documentation to find specific insights during the wireframing and ideation phases. This creates a friction point in the everyday human-centered design workflow, treating user research as a reference document rather than a dynamic conversation.
THE VISION
What if a user persona could talk back?
To streamline the product design lifecycle, I developed an interactive AI Persona, fed entirely with user data. By transforming static documentation into a dynamic conversational agent, the UX team could rapidly query user needs, validate design directions, and predict user behaviors in real time.
Presented to Executive Leadership; Scaled to cross-functional engineering teams.
Make research insights more accessible, interactive, and actionable during product discovery.
{ USABILITY TEST }
I developed an AI persona that facilitates the UX team’s understanding of users, enables rapid validation of design concepts, and informs design decisions by allowing designers to interact with it as if it were a real person.
{ IMPACT OF THE PROJECT}
Built an AI-driven user persona from research insights to support UX ideation, tested it with 20+ simulated queries, surfaced key user pain points, and presented findings to leadership, earning executive recognition.
{ THE SOLUTION }
01
A group member proposes an expense then the group votes in one shared space, ensuring every voice is heard before money is spent.
Presented to Executive Leadership; Scaled to cross-functional engineering teams.
Make research insights more accessible, interactive, and actionable during product discovery.
{ USER INTERVIEWS }
To move beyond my own experience, I conducted 6 user interviews with people who travel with family or friends. To synthesize research, I created an affinity diagram, mapping user quotes into themes.
{ ANALYZING COMPETITORS}
🔍 I also conducted a competitive analysis of three leading expense-sharing apps (Splitwise, Honeydue, and Tricount). The biggest insight wasn’t what these apps included — it was what they were all missing:
None addressed the moment where most group friction actually begins — agreeing before spending money.
{ KEY TAKEAWAYS }
🧠 What is intuitive for me is not always for users
I thought the prototype was going to be clear for my users but the usability test revealed a different reality. This is why validation through testing is essential.
✂️ Being okay with letting go
Initially, I was excited to include many features, but creating user flows showed me how complex that approach could become. Based on user interviews, I learned that users already find budgeting apps confusing, so I shifted my focus to simplicity and core functionality.
🎤 Better questions, better insights
Some users gave detailed responses during the usability study, while others were more general. I learned to rephrase questions to gather more specific and meaningful insights.
© Laura Suarez 2025