Personas & Cohorts

AI personas simulate real users with diverse demographics and behaviors.

What are Personas?

Every CrowdRunner test is executed by AI personas — simulated users with unique demographic profiles. Each persona has attributes like age, occupation, tech comfort level, accessibility needs, and browsing goals. These attributes influence how the persona interacts with your site: a tech-savvy 25-year-old will navigate differently than a 65-year-old who rarely shops online.

After a session, each persona provides a satisfaction score, notes friction points, and reports on their emotional journey throughout the experience.

Built-in Cohorts

Cohorts are groups of personas with related profiles. CrowdRunner ships with several built-in cohorts designed for common testing scenarios:

• General Web Users — A diverse mix of ages, tech levels, and backgrounds. Good for broad usability testing.
• E-commerce Shoppers — Personas focused on purchasing flows, price comparison, and checkout experiences.
• Accessibility-Focused — Includes personas with visual impairments, motor difficulties, and cognitive differences to test inclusive design.
• Mobile-First Users — Personas accustomed to mobile-heavy browsing, useful for responsive design testing.

Browse all built-in cohorts on the Personas page under the Built-in Cohorts tab. Each cohort shows its variation axes (the demographic dimensions it varies across) and a preview of the persona types it generates.

Custom Cohorts

Create cohorts tailored to your specific audience. Navigate to Personas → Custom Cohorts → New Cohort and configure:

• Name & description — Identify your cohort.
• Variation axes — Choose which demographic dimensions to vary (age range, tech literacy, accessibility needs, etc.) and define the possible values.
• Default panel size — How many personas to generate from this cohort by default.

Custom cohorts appear alongside built-in ones when creating a test. They are reusable across all your tests.

Prebuilt Personas

For maximum control, create individual prebuilt personas with specific profiles. Go to Personas → Prebuilt Personas and define exact demographic attributes:

• Age, gender, and occupation
• Tech comfort and browsing habits
• Accessibility requirements
• Goals and context for the session

Prebuilt personas can be selected individually when creating a test, giving you precise control over who tests your site.

Choosing the Right Cohort

Guidelines for selecting a cohort:

• General usability testing — Use "General Web Users" for a broad, diverse panel.
• Target audience testing — Create a custom cohort matching your actual user demographics.
• Accessibility audits — Use the "Accessibility-Focused" cohort to identify inclusive design gaps.
• Regression monitoring — Use the same cohort consistently across scheduled tests to track changes over time.