The next lecture in the User Experience guest lecture series takes place on Tuesday, February 26 at 5:00pm in the Doon campus 2A301 Amphitheatre. Entitled “A Primer on Personas for User Experience Design”, the talk will be given by Robert Barlow-Busch of ArtBarn Labs and Demeure.

Here is the abstract:

It is pretty tough to design a great user experience if you do not know the target audience. So when faced with this problem, well-equipped user experience designers will turn to one of their favourite tools: the persona. Personas draw upon the power of narrative and storytelling to shine a bright light on the elusive “user.” They are especially effective when based upon primary research methods such as ethnography and in-context interviews. Done properly, they become powerful representations of your users’ goals, motivations, and behaviours – and can act as the “north star” for your design decisions. Join us for an introduction to the what, why, and how of design personas, illustrated with examples from commercial projects.

About Robert Barlow-Busch

Robert Barlow-Busch practices user experience professionally as a founding partner of ArtBarn Labs and chief marketing officer of Demeure. You will also find him helping to build the local community as co-champion of UX Waterloo and co-chair of the Fluxible conference. Robert is known for his expertise in leveraging user research to drive product design and innovation. His thoughts have been published in books such as User-Centered Design Stories and The Persona Lifecycle. He graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English Rhetoric and Professional Writing, with minor studies in Speech Communication, from University of Waterloo.

Thanks to Dalibor Dvorski for sending this my way, and for organizing the series.