Personas

[Sebastien Biot <seb viralata net>]

I've been thinking about a way to help with the reorganization of w.g.o
(and d.g.o?) and it occured to me that creating personas[1] could be an
effective tool for this job. What I have so far is the following three
profiles. I would love to get some feedback on this. If this is an avenue
you find worth pursuing I could refine those personas, add new ones if
necessary, include scenarios, etc..

You'll see that some of the tasks I created have actually little to do
with GNOME. I kept them there because I think these are questions people
would be asking when looking at a new software environment. We should
probably think about addressing those questions if only to explain that
they are not directly related to GNOME.

Here it goes:

1. Christian

Christian is 54. He is the owner of a veterinarian clinic in Dortmund,
Germany. Lately he has been worrying about the clinic's aging Windows NT
workstations and about the cost of upgradring them. He is interested in
new technology but technical details bore him. He has been reading about
Open Source software in the press but knows nothing about GNOME.

Christian needs to know what GNOME can and cannot do. He wants to find out
whether the software he needs---basic office stuff---exists for GNOME. He
is particularly interested in figuring out if others like him have made
the switch and how. He'll read any documentation in English but he must
make sure that software for the clinic is available in German. He's
thinking about buying a laptop and a digital camera to work on the road
but is concerned about finding GNOME compatible computer hardware.


2. Rodrigo

Rodrigo is a newly hired system administrator at a PR firm in Tucson,
Arizona. The firm is already using Free Software on the server side and
has decided to move some of its staff over to GNOME. Rodrigo will be
assisting the older system administrator in this task. He is 22, fresh out
of college, and eager to learn.

Rodrigo wants to find has much information as possible about administering
GNOME systems: desktop configuration, security, printing, integration with
remaining Windows workstations, etc.. He'll be doing some staff training
and would like to find material to print and hand out during his lunch
training seminars. He needs a way to keep up with GNOME-related security
alerts and updates.


3. Terry

Terry is 35 and lives in Quebec City, Quebec. She's a project manager for
a network hardware company. Her company would like to start marketing its
new network gizmo ("NetMo") to Linux users. Terry is in charge of the
development of a Linux configuration client for NetMo.

Terry needs to find out what the GNOME platform is about. She needs to
know how she can integrate "NetMo Manager" into the GNOME desktop. She's
not interested in API documentation; her programmers will find and use
that. She wants to understand how it all comes together so that she and
her team can design the best software possible. She's interested in
finding out how or if GNOME's licensing scheme will affect her work. She'd
like to send someone from her team to the next GNOME meeting/conference.




[1] http://iawiki.net/UserPersonas

Sebastien
--
Sebastien Biot <seb viralata net>