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I understand why this would be valuable from a team-building perspective (and support it as such), but I'm not totally convinced this is valuable as a way to im

I understand why this would be valuable from a team-building perspective (and support it as such), but I'm not totally convinced this is valuable as a way to improve the product. Typical user testing is monitoring your users as they succeed/fail to use your product. So I could imagine developers monitoring a sampling of Doordash drivers (with a dashcam or the like) as they use their apps in a typical delivery process. White-collar Doordash engineers/CxOs doing a blue-collar tour for a day would provide insight into some of the initial onboarding struggles for the "new driver" persona, but seems like it would provide limited feedback for the "experienced driver" persona. Even then, app devs/designers are so familiar with getting around odd workflows in their apps that they wouldn't really represent a new driver. It risks biasing product development in a particular way.

ford 5y ago
> "It risks biasing product development in a particular way." I'd agree that it's biased, but I still think it's valuable. Being intimately familiar with all possible personas would be nice, however I'd hope that Engineers/PMs/Employees will use this as an additional input into their decisions about how to run the business. Just as they already use a combination of metrics, customer interviews, financial impact, and intuition about the future when deciding how to operate. Perhaps it'd be valuable for employees to do "ride-alongs" with experienced dashers for the additional perspective you mention
novok 5y ago
They're not doing it for a day, they are doing it once a month. Eventually they will get out of the newbie persona and into the casual one, which is the vast majority of drivers for these kinds of apps AFAIK. Eating your own dogfood is powerful at many companies, and a bad sign at a B2C company if your staff don't use it unless there are special circumstances that prevent them.
deleted 5y ago
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anarticle 5y ago
Personas are just that, models. Models are wrong but useful. There is a ton of unspoken information that even veteran users don't communicate. I used to sit for hours watching people use microscopes, and learned way more in those hours than I would have sitting at my compiler. Many of my really killer ideas came from watching users. It's hard to know what you don't know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

ford 5y ago

> "It risks biasing product development in a particular way." I'd agree that it's biased, but I still think it's valuable. Being intimately familiar with all possible personas would be nice, however I'd hope that Engineers/PMs/Employees will use this as an additional input into their decisions about how to run the business. Just as they already use a combination of metrics, customer interviews, financial impact, and intuition about the future when deciding how to operate. Perhaps it'd be valuable for employees to do "ride-alongs" with experienced dashers for the additional perspective you mention

novok 5y ago

They're not doing it for a day, they are doing it once a month. Eventually they will get out of the newbie persona and into the casual one, which is the vast majority of drivers for these kinds of apps AFAIK. Eating your own dogfood is powerful at many companies, and a bad sign at a B2C company if your staff don't use it unless there are special circumstances that prevent them.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anarticle 5y ago

Personas are just that, models. Models are wrong but useful. There is a ton of unspoken information that even veteran users don't communicate. I used to sit for hours watching people use microscopes, and learned way more in those hours than I would have sitting at my compiler. Many of my really killer ideas came from watching users. It's hard to know what you don't know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things