Are you a farmer or innovator that wants to make sure your product sells?

An advisor who wants to ensure that you provide information that is tailored to farmer needs?

Or a researcher or policy maker, that wants your recommendations to be aligned with what is required on the ground?

Going the extra mile and understanding the needs of the people that will use your product or service is important in the agricultural sector.

In this event Dr Lisa Williams van Dijk, Dr Laurens van der Cruyssen and Emily Bull will discuss the method of creating personas to help connect with users and maximise your business or role. The persona method has been used in the manufacturing and retail sectors for many years, but it has received limited attention in the agricultural sector. This event will look at examples of persona creation to develop an online knowledge reservoir, part of a Horizon 2020 European project as well as to understand farmer knowledge exchange requirements in the dairy-bred beef calf rearing sector. Join us to find out how to use it and how it can help you!

Dr Lisa Williams van Dijk is the Head of Knowledge Exchange and Research Support at the Royal Agricultural University. Her doctoral studies focused specifically on methods and approaches for knowledge transfer and co-innovation in the agriculture sector. She is currently involved in several EU rural development projects working towards speeding up agricultural innovation.

Dr Laurens van der Cruyssen is the founder of Ennoia design studio, associate of the OSMOS network and founding member of NGO POOL IS COOL. He has a PhD in Psychology, specialising in social psychology and neuroscience related to the topic of stereotypes. He is currently involved in the EU funded projects EURAKNOS, EUREKA and Connecting Nature projects.

Emily Bull is a Research Assistant in the Knowledge Exchange team. She is currently finalising her PhD investigating the needs and knowledge exchange requirements of farmers in the dairy-bred beef sector. Emily also assists on a range of other RAU research projects and is involved in the EUREKA project.

This work is conducted as part of the EUREKA project. EUREKA is an EU-funded action that aims to help ensure the longer-term and wider use by farmers, foresters and other rural businesses of the practical knowledge and innovative solutions that are generated by Horizon 2020 multi-actor projects. For more information see: h2020eureka.eu

Going the extra mile: Understanding people in the agricultural sector