Have you met User? You know, the guy in "as a user, I want to..."?

The nameless, generic user that serves as the actor in many user stories does little to encourage empathy in your Agile project teams. Beyond that, it's highly unlikely that all of the desires encapsulated in a project's user stories would be shared by one individual. But when every story is told from User's perspective, it becomes incredibly difficult to understand the value of each story so that it can be effectively prioritized.

Research-backed personas provide a powerful tool to understand the people for whom you are building a product, and they're a natural fit for transforming User into someone to whom your team can actually relate.

In this session, I'll explain how to conduct guerilla research to create personas for your product, and I will outline the business and user experience benefits that come from allowing those personas to guide your requirements definition and discussion.