Who is the User in Your Stories?

Keep Real People at the Heart of Your Team’s Decisions

When teams lack direct access to users or customers, decision-making often shifts into a noisy chorus of “I think we should…”, usually led by the loudest or most senior voice in the room. Everyone claims to speak for the user, but few agree on who that user is.

Personas can help cut through the noise. Not the over-polished kind gathering dust in a deck, but realistic profiles that help your team align, empathize, and make better choices. You’ll learn how to create lightweight, assumption-based personas using what your team already knows and how to evolve them over time as you gather new insights.

Whether you work in product, operations, marketing, or service delivery, this session will help you:

• Understand what makes personas effective (and why so many fail)

• Build useful personas fast, using existing knowledge

• Identify key risks in your assumptions and learn how to eliminate them

You’ll walk away with a flexible approach that helps your team keep people at the center of your decisions, even when you’re far from the front lines.