New Personas¶

Currently working on these here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/18x5A2mubyVmsfeLnriVhUd5oHl2mRU1EV9xW620vQSU/edit?usp=sharing

Old -User Personas¶

NOTE -- THESE ARE VERY OLD PERSONAS FROM THE ORIGINAL DEVELOPMENT OF ARVAODS. THIS NEED TO BE TRIMMED, UPDATED AND FOCUSES FOR WB2 WORK.

Ingrid the Informatician¶

Titles¶

Computational Biologist, Statistician, Informatician

Background¶

Ingrid has PhD in genomics, computational biology, systems biology. She also has training in statistics and mathematics. Some understanding of software programming. Ingrid has strong training in biology and a deep understanding for how biology works.

She works in a bioinformatics, biology or genetics laboratory. She works alone, but usually has other informaticians, biologists and geneticists in the same lab. She may recommend or evaluate tools but does not normally have budget authority.

She knows Python and R, and is most comfortable in one of these languages for most of her analytical work. Likely some exposure to other general purpose languages (Perl, shell scripting) and stats/math languages like Matlab.

Personality¶

Core motivation is to make discoveries which can be published or delivered as new products. She is highly independent and wants to have the freedom to do what she wants to do. Ingrid is a tinkerer and is constantly iterating and trying new things.

Ingrid is an analytical problem solver. She is focused on solving biological or genetic problems. For Ingrid, tools are there to get to results and to answers of hard questions about biological and biomedical problems.

She is not interested in hardcore technical development, scalability or creating production software systems.

h3, Needs Matrix

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed
Storage space
Big data complexity
Slow computations
Limited time
Wasting time on computing
Make a discovery
Spend time on biology
Independence

Latent
Provenance
Don’t understand big data
Don’t get fault tolerance
Learning new languages
Respect
Credit for work
Translating discovery to med

Deepak the Developer¶

Titles¶

Developer, Application Developer, Software Engineer

Background¶

Deepak has a degree and training in computer science. Regardless of training, in this role Deepak is doing applied work creating applications and systems. Deepak works in an IT team. He is responsible for building and maintaining systems for internal users within their organization.

Likely program in Java but may also be a Dot NET developer. (Not sure if he knows PHP or Ruby.)

Personality¶

Deepak is smart. He’s an orderly and systematic problem solver. He works with a team and takes direction easily from his manager. As developers go, he is relatively conservative and likes to work with established technologies that he already knows.

In general, his manager or an architect on the team makes the technology choices. Deepak isn’t the first to jump on the latest and greatest technologies, but wants to be well informed and do good work. He doesn’t want his skills to fall behind in the job market. He likes to work 9-5.

Deepak likes to learn in a structured way through training and certification programs.

h3, Needs Matrix

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed
Working with big data
Understanding biology
Having to abandon known tools
Failing to deliver projects
Wasting time on infrastructure issues

Rapid development
Get a promotion
Happy “customers”
Work life balance

Latent
Maintaining too much technology stack

Using the wrong technology and getting stuck

Working too hard

Not looking bad
Feel like making a difference
Job security

Alex the Administrator¶

Titles¶

System Administrator, IT Manager, Orvos Administrator, Developer, Lab Manager

Background¶

Alex is technical. His training may not be formal technical CS training. He is not a software programmer but he can do some scripting work. He has some networking certificate and a Linux administrator certificate.
Alex is respected in the organization for being good at managing projects and keep operations running smoothly. The other people in the lab depend on him for the distribution of resources, but when there conflicts he turns to his manager (usually an Executive) to reconcile differences.

He may work in the lab, departmental IT, or in central IT that supports labs in the institution.

h3, Personality
Alex is a very task oriented person. He likes clear processes and organization. He tries to keep people happy. He is generally not a risk taker. Alex likes to learn as he goes by solving specific problems as they come up. He is the person who calls support or goes to the support forums.

Needs Matrix¶

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed
Systems going down
Unhappy users
Surprises
Hard to use admin
Security breaches
Wasting
Happy users

Latent
Doesn’t understand system
Job security
Respect

Don Datacenter¶

Titles¶

Network Administrator, System Administrator, IT Tech, System Consultant

Background¶

Don is self taught in doing network work and system administration. He’s always liked to hack with hardware. He was the person that you’d call if your computer wasn’t working or you couldn’t get your wireless set up.

Out of school he started out working in an IT department and learned on the job how to manage systems.

Personality¶

Don is thoughtful and feels a high degree of responsibility for ensuring that the equipment he is responsible for is working. He is a highly reliable and careful person. He doesn’t like bullshit, because in his job things work or don’t work and it’s usually pretty clear. If something doesn’t work, he’d expect that the vendor will provide good support.

Don is protective of the systems that he runs and enforces rules and requirements.

Needs Matrix¶

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed

People not unhappy
Unreliable
Unpredictable systems
Hard to trouble shooting
Black boxes they can’t fix
Equipment that breaks
Equipment that’s hard to repair
Things that don’t integrate with SMS

Not being hassled

Latent
Have someone else sys admin cloud

Job security

Carl the Clinician¶

Titles¶

Medical Geneticist, Oncologist, Pathologist

Background¶

Carl has a MD and/or a PhD, and probably works at a major academic medical center where he conducts clinical research. Carl’s research is funded by a mixture of the profit from clinical care and grant money. Even though it may not be the focus of Carl’s life, Carl takes his research seriously: being cited and being published are important to him.

Personality¶

Carl is a workaholic, but motivated more by prestige than by money. On the clinical care side, Carl is very risk-averse and won’t try untested methods. On the research side, Carl is a risk seeker and wants to be published in the most visible and prominent journals.

Needs Matrix¶

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed

Research possibilities constrained by fear of violating consent promises

Lack of access to larger data sets due to non-sharing of data
Discover medical breakthrough/insight

Be published in top journals, invited to speak at top conferences

Latent
Staff unhappy with lack of resources, or stupid processes, or unnecessary menial labor (having to copy disk drives, having to re-validate pipelines)

Be the lab of choice for fellows, postdocs, etc.

Heather the Human Biology Researcher¶

Titles¶

Professor of human genetics; Head of major research group

Background¶

PhD, probably NOT MD. Postdoc. Almost certainly a professor or at a large research institution.

Personality¶

Visionary, dislikes mundane details, strong preference for open source and transparency, because they never spend money. They are good at convincing their institution to buy things for them. They only make money from grants, so grant-writing is a core skill.

h3, Needs Matrix

Pain
Aspiration

Expressed

Lack of access to larger data sets due to non-sharing of data

Inability to get enough grant money

Getting budget built into grants to cover infrastructure needs
Be published in top journals, invited to speak at top conferences

Latent
Can’t do the advanced computational stuff because they don’t have the resources to get it done.
Be the lab of choice for fellows, postdocs, etc.

Clyde the Remote Admin¶

Titles¶

System Administrator

Background¶

Personality¶

Examples

Needs Matrix

Pain
Aspiration
Expressed

Latent