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Why does this seem so dystopian? I’m trying to figure out why this rubs me wrong. It seems practical, and have well defined roles as guides seems to make sense.

Why does this seem so dystopian? I’m trying to figure out why this rubs me wrong. It seems practical, and have well defined roles as guides seems to make sense. But some part of this feels like it just replaced the human aspect. Like it just replaced the team with the roles, and like it just demolished the idea that a generalist could exist. I could never imagine a company getting off the ground with this kind of system.

hargup 4y ago
These are buyer and user persona, not the actual role of the people working at GitLab. Personas are a regular tool used in product development or sales, where you create an idealized profile of the person and then use it to model behaviors.
woodruffw 4y ago
I think you're reading too much into it. Gitlab's "personas" just seem like a slightly cutesier version of the bog-standard "user story" technique[1]. They've also been around for about 30 years (from a search, I wasn't aware of this before)[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mqus 4y ago
  You can also combine them to then have stories like As <persona> I can <capability>, so that <receive benefit> Which improves the story a bit imho because you have a clearer picture on what "role" does or can also divide them up (according to familiarity/usage frequency of the tool e.g.)
trynewideas 4y ago
These are product marketing personas describing general roles that exist in companies that they want to sell to. They aren't personas for who should be GitLab employees, they're a design and sales tool.
francislavoie 4y ago
This isn't an original thing. The concept of personas is a common approach to doing UX testing and design. I learned about them in my university human-computer interaction course. Random article from Google for example: https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/putting-personas-to-work-in-ux-design/ https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/putting-per...
robgibbons 4y ago
Personas are a popular tool in "design thinking" and are useful for helping product owners, designers, and developers consider the needs of a "known" set of user archetypes. The point is to see your app through their eyes, priorities, frustrations. Certainly there are users who don't fit any particular persona, but for the happy paths of your app, it's helpful to give a name to a few known "classes" of user.
pmcp 4y ago
In product design, Personas are a way to agree on jobs to be done, scope the work and help find new ideas for features. In Marketing it helps to brief agencies and to talk about a big group of people in a less homogeneous way. One person can be in multiple persona categories, and personas can change or evolve over time. I don’t see the “dystopian” aspect in it, nor do Insee it demolish any idea. It’s just a tool.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
> I could never imagine a company getting off the ground with this kind of system. Well, many companies do this. This is a common tool for aligning around user needs.
isthisthingon99 4y ago
Don't worry no one will ever use it except sometimes and the one time you forgot to use it but it could have been useful and someone will point out how you forgot to use it and it could have been useful and you will beat yourself up about it realizing that you will never get a promotion now! Haha jk.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Centigonal 4y ago
It's exactly because humans contain multitudes that teams use personas. You can't design your ridesharing app around the needs of Marco, the policy coordinator in Washington, DC who loves longboarding and doesn't own a car, who needs a way to occasionally get to his aunt's house in Frederick, MD and also to get home after a wild EDM show - that's way too specific. What if Marco only wants to ride in American-made cars? Other people who need transport might not care about that. Instead, you can design your app around "person who lives in the city, doesn't own a car, and needs transport for trips outside the city ~3x/month," and "bar/concert patron who needs transport for trips within the city ~5x/mo and may be intoxicated when trying to purchase that transport." A "persona" is a shared part of the human experience that your product interfaces with, and using that abstraction lets you create products that fit neatly into many people's lives.
kissgyorgy 4y ago
First, this is standard practice in marketing, nothing special here. Second, I find this quite the opposite what you are describing. Instead of just coming up with too generalistic terms, ideas, the marketing team tries to imagine a potential, REAL customers and trying to prepare ways to talk to them. I find this not only effective, but more polite with everyone's time.
- patriciaaa 4y ago
  [dead]
_visgean 4y ago
> Why does this seem so dystopian? I’m trying to figure out why this rubs me wrong. For me it is being reduced to "Sasha (Software Developer)", she does not seem quite like me and I dont like to be categorized like that.. I understand why this is useful to gitlab, but from the external point of view it seems strange to be talked about in this way. Its almost as seeing the internal discussion of how to target you with ads. But at the end of the day pretty much standard practise and is nothing more than an elaborate answer to "who uses our products and why." So kudos to gitlab to being open about it.
- kube-system 4y ago
  I don’t understand why people are taking these so personally. The point of them is to be an example of someone. They are characters, in a story.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Because they are stereotypes. And we all have negative experiences being stereotyped, because inevitably very few people fit the stereotype on all points.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      No, user personas have names because they represent an individual. Not all software developers are Sasha, but Sasha is Sasha.
    - naijaboiler 4y ago
      Nobody fits stereotypes on all fronts. Nobody is perfectly average, but that's not the point of personas.

hargup 4y ago

These are buyer and user persona, not the actual role of the people working at GitLab. Personas are a regular tool used in product development or sales, where you create an idealized profile of the person and then use it to model behaviors.

woodruffw 4y ago

I think you're reading too much into it. Gitlab's "personas" just seem like a slightly cutesier version of the bog-standard "user story" technique[1]. They've also been around for about 30 years (from a search, I wasn't aware of this before)[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mqus 4y ago
You can also combine them to then have stories like As <persona> I can <capability>, so that <receive benefit> Which improves the story a bit imho because you have a clearer picture on what "role" does or can also divide them up (according to familiarity/usage frequency of the tool e.g.)

trynewideas 4y ago

These are product marketing personas describing general roles that exist in companies that they want to sell to. They aren't personas for who should be GitLab employees, they're a design and sales tool.

francislavoie 4y ago

This isn't an original thing. The concept of personas is a common approach to doing UX testing and design. I learned about them in my university human-computer interaction course. Random article from Google for example: https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/putting-personas-to-work-in-ux-design/ https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-research/putting-per...

robgibbons 4y ago

Personas are a popular tool in "design thinking" and are useful for helping product owners, designers, and developers consider the needs of a "known" set of user archetypes. The point is to see your app through their eyes, priorities, frustrations. Certainly there are users who don't fit any particular persona, but for the happy paths of your app, it's helpful to give a name to a few known "classes" of user.

pmcp 4y ago

In product design, Personas are a way to agree on jobs to be done, scope the work and help find new ideas for features. In Marketing it helps to brief agencies and to talk about a big group of people in a less homogeneous way. One person can be in multiple persona categories, and personas can change or evolve over time. I don’t see the “dystopian” aspect in it, nor do Insee it demolish any idea. It’s just a tool.

SkyPuncher 4y ago

> I could never imagine a company getting off the ground with this kind of system. Well, many companies do this. This is a common tool for aligning around user needs.

isthisthingon99 4y ago

Don't worry no one will ever use it except sometimes and the one time you forgot to use it but it could have been useful and someone will point out how you forgot to use it and it could have been useful and you will beat yourself up about it realizing that you will never get a promotion now! Haha jk.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Centigonal 4y ago

It's exactly because humans contain multitudes that teams use personas. You can't design your ridesharing app around the needs of Marco, the policy coordinator in Washington, DC who loves longboarding and doesn't own a car, who needs a way to occasionally get to his aunt's house in Frederick, MD and also to get home after a wild EDM show - that's way too specific. What if Marco only wants to ride in American-made cars? Other people who need transport might not care about that. Instead, you can design your app around "person who lives in the city, doesn't own a car, and needs transport for trips outside the city ~3x/month," and "bar/concert patron who needs transport for trips within the city ~5x/mo and may be intoxicated when trying to purchase that transport." A "persona" is a shared part of the human experience that your product interfaces with, and using that abstraction lets you create products that fit neatly into many people's lives.

kissgyorgy 4y ago

First, this is standard practice in marketing, nothing special here. Second, I find this quite the opposite what you are describing. Instead of just coming up with too generalistic terms, ideas, the marketing team tries to imagine a potential, REAL customers and trying to prepare ways to talk to them. I find this not only effective, but more polite with everyone's time.

patriciaaa 4y ago
[dead]

_visgean 4y ago

> Why does this seem so dystopian? I’m trying to figure out why this rubs me wrong. For me it is being reduced to "Sasha (Software Developer)", she does not seem quite like me and I dont like to be categorized like that.. I understand why this is useful to gitlab, but from the external point of view it seems strange to be talked about in this way. Its almost as seeing the internal discussion of how to target you with ads. But at the end of the day pretty much standard practise and is nothing more than an elaborate answer to "who uses our products and why." So kudos to gitlab to being open about it.

kube-system 4y ago
I don’t understand why people are taking these so personally. The point of them is to be an example of someone. They are characters, in a story.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Because they are stereotypes. And we all have negative experiences being stereotyped, because inevitably very few people fit the stereotype on all points.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    No, user personas have names because they represent an individual. Not all software developers are Sasha, but Sasha is Sasha.
  - naijaboiler 4y ago
    Nobody fits stereotypes on all fronts. Nobody is perfectly average, but that's not the point of personas.