This talk includes:

The promise of personas and the problems we want them to solve.

A brief history of personas.

Why people roll their eyes about personas, and why I still love them (with caveats).

How and why I refocused on executive alignment, and why alignment is more powerful than data.

The difference between traditional personas and alignment personas:

* Traditional personas translate and communicate data.

* Alignment personas are hypotheses. They create and communicate executive alignment and give data a 'place to land.'

Alignment personas in five conversations (the how-to)

1. Let's play a game (business goals Mad Libs)

2. Pretend you're a building (who is at the front door and why)

3. Get needy (the pink stickies: "I want ..." and "I need...." statements)

4. Persona-fy (identify differences-that-make-a-difference and give them names and faces)

5. Pick the winners (prioritize alignment personas based on goals)

The magical sentence that all companies need: "If we don't make Dana and Trey ridiculously happy, we won't hit our highest priority goals."

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