The Persona technique consists in introducing, in the process of realization of a product (good or service), one or more fictitious personages representing users of the product to be designed. In this paper, we present a preliminary study on the adaptation of the Persona technique to promote the pedagogical quality of practical works in HCI education. These practical works concern the specification using UML and the sketching of interactive systems. We call the variant used: Living Persona. The teacher plays the role of the Persona; this Persona is described in paper form and provided to each student. The teacher interacts with groups of students (each simulating a company), for a better understanding of the user needs. After recalling the history of the concept of Persona, we explain how we develop it and introduce it into guidelines of practical works. Then we present a first study with 54 Master’s degree students in Computer Science. We end the paper by presenting the implementation of a more complete study to detect other pedagogical contributions of this promising technique