Slides from a talk I did in 2012 for Coloft Academy in Santa Monica. At the time, I was constantly dumbfounded by how few UX/UI "professionals" were researching, talking to, or even thinking about users. This is still a problem. So, this talk is about refocusing design on the people that we do it for: the users. Who are they in the first place? How do we learn more about them? What are user personas and how do we make them actionable?