User personas
Note
Parts of this page and the personas are adapted from our handbook page about personas.
User personas are a generalized way of talking about the ideal target we are aiming to design GDK for. They help us primarily to define our product but also our messaging approach. Keeping personas in mind allows us to use the correct language and make the best decisions to address their specific problems and pain points.
Our user personas are based on both the organizational structure of GitLab and the preexisting GitLab user personas, derived from UX research studies. User personas are people, who use GDK to contribute to GitLab. They might contribute code directly, review changes, or test code.
GDK users are split in two broad groups, team members and people from the broader GitLab community. The latter also includes customers, who contribute changes to GitLab, either as a dedicated initiative or as part of the Co-Create program.
mindmap root((GDK users)) Team members Community members Individual contributors Customers
While community contributors outnumber team members, team members disproportionately spend more time using GDK. This gives us the unique opportunity to talk to GDK’s power users with very little friction. Most of them are team members, who are a single Slack message or coffee chat away from sharing their experience using GDK with us.
Personas
Mia (ML Engineer)
- Handbook page
- Their current use cases often span multiple components which they need to actively iterate on in quick succession.
Sasha (Software Developer)
Simone (Software Engineer in Test)
Parker (Product Manager)
Presley (Product Designer)
Usage matrix
The purpose of development environments can broadly be categorized in two types: creating and validating (code) changes.
Most GDK users fall in one of the two high-validation quadrants but not every user needs to change code, especially not at all times.
quadrantChart title Change creation and validation x-axis Low creation --> High creation y-axis Low validation --> High validation Engineers: [0.9, 0.75] Engineers in Test: [0.62, 0.85] Product/Engineering Manager: [0.2, 0.9] Product Designer: [0.34, 0.8]