launchpad developmentPersonas are a thinking tool to help us think about what we're doing in terms of actual, honest-to-goodness human beings who aren't us.
They aren't meant to represent any particular individual or even a target market. They are instead a condensation of our actual users into a number that we can actually think about and talk about.
The profiles here are in-progress and not meant to be authoritative. Instead, they are supposed to be ways to stimulate and direct discussion. e.g. "What would Aitana think about this?".
John the Coder
- Loves coding
- Hates wasting time doing 'admin'
- Likes to get changes landed
- Mostly uses the terminal
- knows about DVCs, but not much about bzr
- Hates interruptions
- Often automates tedious tasks
- Constantly finding bugs in things, especially his own code
- Anal about their code
- Has used open source for many years
- Has to be part of communities (and is!)
- Seeks praise from his peers
Aitana the Translator
- Wants to help out in Ubuntu, but has very little technical skills
- Not a native English speaker
- Uses Ubuntu in Catalan
- Cares about translations quality, as it's what she has to use
- Passionate about her language
- Is in high school, so has a lot of time on her hands
- Eager to learn
- Uses GUI tools, the terminal is still kind of scary to him
- Done a little bit of programming at school
- A little insecure, masks this by talking too much
Jeremy the Manager
- Runs a small team
- Has a suspicious boss
- Has 12 developers to coordinate
- Knows how to program but hasn't seen actual code in a year
- Really gets along with his team, but one of them seems to be not doing enough, and that worries him.
- Pretty much always has one (or three!) important deadlines to meet
- Often being hassled by stakeholders from other departments
Kara the Ubuntu packager
- Small contributions across a huge range of _stuff_
- Gets way too much email
- Likes to stay involved
- Motivated by community as much as credit
- Needs to keep up-to-date with everything happening in the distro
- Has cyclic stressful months (before every release)
- Lives in the terminal, only uses GUI when forced
- Has used Launchpad for years, knows it better than some of the devs
- Has long since changed the way she works to work around broken tools -- it's the Debian way
- Reached the top of the community game ages ago. Not motivated by increased standing
- Packages other peoples software
Matthew the LAMP developer
- Works in web development with PHP and MySQL
- Uses SVN and a custom-made ticketing system
- Uses as much open source software as he can, but is stuck with a few proprietary apps
- Is interested in getting things done, doesn't care about communities
- Has a dual-boot Ubuntu install at home, but has to use Windows at work, and his company use Fedora on servers.
- Hasn't ever committed to an Open Source project. He'd like to, but he's a bit scared, since a lot of these people are uber-geeks.
- When Matthew asks a technical question on an Internet forum (mailing list, IRC, whatever), it's always very, very carefully phrased. He's savvy enough to know that badly-asked questions draw fire, and that's the last thing he wants. He takes a long time to ask them, and is always a little disappointed when they don't get answered.
Bill the OEM engineer
- Works for a large OEM company
- Works with a custom version of Ubuntu built for their PCs
- Uses IE7. Company policy.
- Is very technical con specific issues, but doesn't care about communities
- Not a native English speaker
- Works with multiple tools in parallel (bug trackers, etc)
- Has crazy serious deadlines
- Needs good documentation
- Lives in a small rural city in China
- Has a very bad internet connection
