A persona represents a group of target users that share common behavioral characteristics. The personas method, an approach to systems design, has been receiving significant attention from practitioners. However, only anecdotal evidence currently exists for the effectiveness of personas. This research-in-progress, a Delphi study of personas experts, attempts to reach consensus on the benefits of incorporating personas into design projects. This study also lays the foundation for future research by identifying variables of interest, and building construct validity through the definitions of items given by the experts. Experimental studies will validate if groups of subjects that are provided with personas design more usable systems than groups that are given data on the target users in a non-persona form. Also, planned case studies will concentrate on studying the use of and effectiveness of personas in the organizational setting