Sessions

Personas are about helping an organization make sense of the audience so it can make more audience-focused decisions. The goal is more than just usability, it’s about want-to-use-ability. By facilitating deeper, more empathetic connection between an organization and its audiences, you can convert the organization’s raw data into insights about what really drives audiences.

To be transformative, personas must evoke a sense of empathy with the audience. That happens only when the organization itself creates the personas, as well as identifying those audience journeys from awareness through to loyalty and advocacy.

Empathy-based personas help the people creating and managing the organization’s offerings understand that those offerings exist in the audience’s context and for the audience’s needs and goals.

The approach of leading employees through the persona creation process is a wonderful silo-buster, bringing internal people together who often have not had the opportunity to collaborate before. When organizations choose to validate the personas through focus groups, they always prove to be on the mark.

This session will show IAs how to harness empathy as a strategic tool for making the leap from insight to action. It will include case studies and an interactive exercise, so you can come away with an understanding of the process and a framework they can use going forward.

Key takeaways from the session:

• How to leverage internal knowledge/emotional intelligence to take the data you have to a higher level
• How to foster a culture of empathy throughout your organization that creates a deep, shared knowledge of your audiences, breaks down silos, and develops a lasting framework for strategic thought
• How to use this shared sense of your audiences to break down silos, create valuable prioritization frameworks, and foster a culture centered around your most important audiences