Arvados » Arvados Workbench 2

h1. UserPersonas

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. 

Examples

Madeline, Kim, Stacia, John Aach, Joe Luquette, Brad Chapman 

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.

Examples

Eugene, VA programmers, Kevin’s team at MGH, Si Wong  

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. 

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.

Examples

Suzanne Clewley (Genetics Department)

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. 

Examples

Bret

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.

Examples

Joe Thakuria, Raphael Bueno, Gabriel Corfas, Jon+Christine Seidman

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.

Examples

Jon Seidman, Ting Wu, Steve Elledge, Jim Gusella, David Reich, Peter Park, Mark Gerstein

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 Clinical Future Remote Admin

Titles

System Administrator

Background

Personality

Examples

Needs Matrix

Pain

Aspiration

Expressed

Latent

Notes on Executives

IT Managers/CIO 

Data center Manager? 

Lab Directors 

PI’s