A persona is a composite, fictional profile representing a group of real users with similar goals and behaviors — a concept popularized by software designer Alan Cooper in the 1990s to keep design teams focused on real needs instead of designing for 'everyone.' A user journey map lays out the stages a person moves through with a product or service (for example: awareness, sign-up, first use, regular use, and advocacy or churn) and highlights their goals, actions, and pain points at each stage. Together, personas and journey maps turn scattered research notes into a shared reference the whole team can point to when deciding what to build next, rather than relying on personal opinion.