"n12" AI Persona Building Tool

AI Personas: Designing Persona Conversational AI

Role: Product UX/UI Designer
Year: 2022
Project Type: SaaS Web App Design

Overview

The AI Personas app allows users to create custom AI-driven personas, such as a business consultant or product strategist, and interact with them in real time. Beyond chat, users can generate complete user journeys and process maps based on each persona’s expertise. My goal was to design an intuitive, modern interface that made the complexity of AI functionality approachable and user-centered.

AI Persona User Journey Generator

The Challenge

The initial MVP, built by engineers, lacked a clear UX and had inconsistent UI patterns. Users struggled to:

  • Understand how to create and customize AI personas.
  • Engage in natural conversations with the AI.
  • Generate and refine user journeys without technical friction.

My objective was to redesign the product to:

  • Support seamless persona creation and interaction.
  • Provide an elegant interface for AI-generated journey creation.
  • Establish a cohesive design system for scalability.

My Process

Research & Discovery

I conducted interviews with startup founders and product designers to understand how AI personas could fit into their workflows. I identified key pain points in onboarding and persona customization. I also analyzed similar tools in AI chat and productivity to benchmark usability and feature scope.

Information Architecture

I streamlined the flow into three main sections:

  1. Persona Library – where users browse, create, and manage personas.
  2. Chat Interface – for interacting with personas and retrieving insights.
  3. Journey Generator – to visualize and edit AI-generated user journeys directly.
Wireframes & Prototyping

I created low-fidelity wireframes to validate the new flow and iterated based on user feedback. In high-fidelity prototypes, I focused on:

  • A conversational interface that felt modern and intuitive.
  • A journey editor with drag-and-drop capabilities and editable nodes.
  • Dynamic persona pages with clear visuals and settings access.
Visual Design

I designed a clean, professional UI with a modern SaaS aesthetic:

  • Typography: Inter, with a focus on clarity and hierarchy.
  • Colors: Vivid blue with soft accents for a professional tone.
  • Components: Reusable, scalable elements built into a Figma design system, variants, and prototyping links.

Key Features

  • Persona Builder: Users can define personality traits, roles, and expertise.
  • Interactive Chat: Real-time AI conversations with contextual suggestions.
  • User Journey Generator: AI outputs editable visual workflows for teams to refine and export.

Outcome

The redesigned app achieved:

  • Faster onboarding, reducing user drop-off during persona creation.
  • Higher engagement with the journey generator feature.
  • Consistent, scalable design assets for future product iterations.

Results

The design is still in development. This project pushed me to simplify highly technical AI workflows into intuitive user interactions. I’m proud of how the design system allowed engineers to implement new features rapidly while maintaining a cohesive user experience.

Website

https://n12.ai/

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