2018 Digital PM Summit - An Interview with Aaron Irizarry on Creating Personas

A few weeks ago the 2018 Digital PM Summit was held in Memphis. This is the 6th year the conference has been held and the Bureau of Digital put together another incredibly inspiring conference. The event focuses on helping PMs in who work in the Digital space amp up their ability to practice their craft. During the conference, Aaron Irizarry gave a presentation called “Laying the Groundwork: Building Foundations for High-Performing Teams”. Aaron is currently working as a Design Director at Capital One.

After Aaron’s session we had the chance to sit down and record a podcast on how to create Personas. During the interview we talk about why personas are so important how to go about creating archetypes, personas, how to conduct proxy interviews and keep your own bias from influencing your results, and how much detail you should include when you are putting them together.

Aaron is also the co-author of Discussing Design: Improving Communication and Collaboration through Critique. 

If you’d like to get in touch with Aaron with additional questions or to hear more about his session at the Summit, you can reach him via Twitter at https://twitter.com/aaroni

Designing Together - Podcast Interview with Dan Brown

Click here to listen to the podcast

At DigitalPM 2013 I had the chance to meet Dan Brown, who is a founder and principal at Eight Shapes, a Washington D.C. based user experience consulting firm. Dan is also the author of Communicating Design and Designing Together and at the conference he facilitated a session using a game called Surviving Design Projects that he developed to help improve communication with design on projects where there is conflict.

In the interview we discuss Dan’s perspective on the value Design brings to the team and how we can improve our interaction with them. Dan also shares his thoughts on the challenges facing the role of project management in the digital space.

One of my lightbulb moments during this conversation was that in many ways, it seems as though the design side of the house and the agile software side of the house are headed down the street in the same direction, but on opposite sides of the street. It raises the question of when/how there will be a convergence in how the two sides approach their work.

If you’d like to learn more about Dan, here are some links that will help:
Eight Shapes
Twitter
Amazon