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 built-in cohorts designed for common testing scenarios:

General Consumers — A diverse mix of ages, tech comfort levels, and decision styles. Good for broad usability testing of consumer-facing surfaces.
E-commerce Shoppers — Personas focused on purchasing flows, price comparison, and checkout experiences.
SaaS Decision Makers — B2B evaluators and buyers (engineering managers, VPs, PMs, IT directors) who weigh ROI, security, and integration when assessing vendor software.
Indie Developers — Solo developers and small teams who evaluate dev tools by trying them. Hands-on, opinionated, and price-sensitive.
Small Business Owners — Pragmatic, time-poor SMB owners who need tools that work without a dedicated IT team.
Workplace Software Users — Captive employees using internal or vendor software they did not choose: CRMs, admin panels, HR systems, ticketing. Tech-savvy enough to do the job but impatient with anything that interrupts real work.
Power Users — Long-tenured users with deep muscle memory and shortcut reliance. The cohort most likely to spot regressions in existing flows.
Accessibility-Focused — Personas relying on assistive technology or accessible design (screen readers, keyboard navigation, low vision, cognitive needs, color vision deficiency). Surfaces issues other cohorts physically cannot notice.
Mobile-First Users — People experiencing the web primarily on a phone, often over flaky connections and on mid-range or older devices. Exposes responsive and performance regressions that no desktop cohort will see.
First-Time Visitors — Newcomers with a small attention budget forming a verdict in seconds. Right cohort for landing pages, pricing, signup flows, and onboarding.

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 Consumers" 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.
Landing pages and signup flows — Use "First-Time Visitors" to evaluate clarity and trust signals against a small attention budget.
Mobile and responsive testing — Use "Mobile-First Users" to surface performance and layout regressions specific to phone use.
Internal tools and admin panels — Use "Workplace Software Users" to test surfaces that real employees cannot opt out of.
Established product redesigns — Use "Power Users" to catch regressions in flows long-time users rely on.
Regression monitoring — Use the same cohort consistently across scheduled tests to track changes over time.