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Using Personas and Pathways to Build Community

Open Life Science • Week 14�Ben Krikler • @benkrikler • he / him

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Ben Krikler

Uni. of Bristol post-doc

Fellow of

A project lead for

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Understanding personas: �who makes up your community
Understanding their pathway: �how your contributors’ roles evolve
Making pathways smoother:�ideas to improve contributors’ journey

>> Understanding how to increase participation

What we’ll do

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Open Leaders design and build projects that empower others to collaborate within inclusive communities.

Open Leadership Framework

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What can they do for me?

What can we do for them?

Photo by Sandip Roy on Unsplash

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Personas:

Who are you trying to support?

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A persona a description of an imaginary person, based on real-world observations and understandings of actual potential or current users.

>>Who are the people you most need you your community? Who is missing?

Persona

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Name, age, convincing identifying details
Skills, level of knowledge, experience
Motivations, fears
Pains and desired gains

>>> What drives this person?

What’s in a persona

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Canvas by DESIGNBETTERBUSINESS.COM available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, See The turing Way chapter on Persona Creation

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Example canvas from�our RemotelyGreen�planning

(excuse the terrible�hand-writing!)

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Your

Open

Project

Kala, Transwoman,

IT student, activist, artist

Motivated by AI, design & animation

Barriers include funding

>>> Driven by AI, design and animation

Taro, Non conforming,

Software dev, Humanitarian

Loves saving animals, has 9 rescue cats

Barrier is time constraints

>>> Love animals, involved in humanitarian work

Image by The Turing Way and Scriberia, available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

TARO

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Pathway:

How will visitors become contributors and more?

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The journey that users or participants (represented by the persona) take in engaging with your project, from first contact to potential leadership.

Pathway

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Remove the “fog”

Understand all routes

Photo by Khoa Nguyen on Unsplash

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Canvas by DESIGNBETTERBUSINESS.COM available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, See The turing Way chapter on Persona Creation

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From https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/how-to-build-customer-journey-maps

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Discovery
First Contact
Participation
Sustained Participation
Networked Participation
Leadership

Typical Steps on an Open Project

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Example Pathway for Kala to THE Port

Discovery: Kala meets someone who took part in the 2016 event
First Contact: Kala watches a recording of the closing ceremony
Participation: Kala applies to join the 2017 hackathon
Sustained Participation: Kala returns to 2018 and helps mentor a challenge
Networked Participation: Kala help the planning for 2019, proposes a challenge, and encourages her friends to take part
Leadership: Kala takes up a role as co-treasurer and engages with other hackathons on behalf of THE Port

Image by The Turing Way and Scriberia, available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

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Personas and pathways: guide you to potential barriers

these can change so should solutions
solutions depend on the project
solutions depend on the person

>> What works for one project / person / moment might not work for another

Adapting To Community Needs is Key

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Implementing:

How can we make even easier pathways?

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Ideas for discovery and first contact

Publicity:

Create and distribute advertising materials to humanities departments
“Call for action”: encourage social media activity during your events

Make meetings friendly:

Do a round of introductions or breakouts at every meeting
Schedule meetings with family commitments in mind

Make repositories easy to get started:

Contributing guidelines
Label issues as “good first issue”
Add a welcome-bot to repositories

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Ideas for participation and beyond

Meeting structure:

Collect emails at meetings for follow-up contact
Encourage Q&A and co-working during lessons
Invite new members to give short talks/lessons

Make it clear who and how you can contact others

Slack / gitter / mattermost organisations
Mentored issues - indicate who will help you if you pick up a task

Recognition is key

All-contributors bot: https://allcontributors.org/

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Thank you!

You can only make a watch from a bucket of gears if you understand each piece and guide them into their right place

What Open Science dreams can you and your community achieve?

Open Life Science • Week 14�Ben Krikler • he / him

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Canvas by DESIGNBETTERBUSINESS.COM available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license, See The turing Way chapter on Persona Creation

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Open Leadership Framework

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Communication Strategy
Event Planning and Engagement
Facilitation Techniques
Content Delivery/Skill Sharing

Elements to Design/Redesign

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Hello, I am KAT.

Ooom… Ooom…. Peace be to you. Oooom. I am TOM.

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Example Persona in detail

Kala is an undergraduate in her first year of IT. Kala is pretty hip, and lived in city center of Bangalore, to be specific. She doesn't know many people, but is pretty outgoing and would like to make some new friends.

Kala has heard terms like “Hackathons" and “Working Open" and has no clear idea to use them for her AI research, and doesn't really know how working open can help her raise awareness on her findings. Kala's research is not very popular, and she is often searching on how to verify her sources and get credible evidence. Kala also suffers from lack of self esteem.

Image by The Turing Way and Scriberia, available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

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Your

Open

Project

_____

OLS-1

KAT, Female, 24, IT Undergrad, Intern, motivated by science and ET, barriers include funding

>>> Driven by innovation and aliens

TOM, Non conforming, 50, Humanitarian, PhD Loves saving animals, has 9 cats, Time constraints

>>> Driven by love for animals, humanitarian work, and golf

>>> How can we engage KAT and TOM in [YOUR OPEN PROJECT?] e.g. Open Life Science.

How will it answer their problems?

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Example Persona

Kat is an undergraduate in her first year of IT. Kat is pretty hip, and comes from out of town - Egypt, to be specific. She doesn't know many people, but is pretty outgoing and would like to make some new friends.

Kat has heard terms like “Hackathons" and “Working Open" and has a no idea that these could be useful for her Alien research, and doesn't really know how working open can help her raise awareness on her findings. Kat's research is not very popular, and she is often searching on how to verify her sources and get credible evidence. Kat also suffers from lack of self esteem.

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Kat and Tom are me and you

How will we join your Open Project?

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Remove barriers

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Create a clear pathway

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Example of Pathway for KAT to OLS-1

Discovery: Kat sees a tweet about Mozilla Fesitval.
First Contact: Kat buys a ticket to Mozfest. The festival is superb. She makes friends.
Participation: Kat applies to Mozilla Open Leaders 9 because her new friend was a former participant.
Sustained Participation: Kat hosts her first Mozilla Sprint hackathon.
Networked Participation: Kat invites some colleagues to MozSprint.
Leadership: Kat volunteers to mentor in Mozilla Open leaders 8.

Thought: "This sounds like a welcoming and interesting group!"

Saw that there would be snacks
Saw that there would be other peers in the group in the same beginning situation.

Everyone introduces themselves,

people are encouraged to work in pairs, and Morgan's partner turns out to be cool and nice.

Kat goes to a code-along, and asks some questions about the material.

Kat makes a comment on a discussion issue on GitHub.
Kat has been having a hard time finding words in text when there are spelling errors. Kat talks to another group member and realizes there could be a programmatic solution.

5. EMPHASIZE: the end of the pathway can be a very high-level leadership position for some people. Kat is persuaded to join the leadership of UofT Coders, like what happened to Luke and Lina. For example: both of them started out as interested random people, then they came pretty often, each of them had taught a few sessions, they were actively contributing on GitHub to group improvement, so I asked them to form the interim executive team. In addition to one other early contributor who’s not here, since then we’ve added 2 new positions. Our ability to do that is enhanced by the fact that we can have in-person meetings.

My two-cents: if you’re looking for a leader, think of someone who’s already interested and involved and ask them to either keep doing that officially, or to take on more responsibility. If that person doesn’t exist, a persona and pathway could help.

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Example of Pathway for KALA in OLS

Discovery: Kala sees a retweet by her colleague about OLS.
First Contact: Kala joins a webinar. She enjoyed the call. Got to know us.
Participation: Kala applies to OLS-3 because an OLS-2 attendee recommended.
Sustained Participation: Kala creates her first open repository and continues applying the learned skills in developing her project.
Networked Participation: Kala hosts a networking event in her university and invites her colleagues to join her efforts.
Leadership: Kala has launched her project for her community and returns to OLS-4 as a mentor.

Image by The Turing Way and Scriberia, available under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license

Thought: "This sounds like a welcoming and interesting group!"

Saw that there would be snacks
Saw that there would be other peers in the group in the same beginning situation.

Everyone introduces themselves,

people are encouraged to work in pairs, and Morgan's partner turns out to be cool and nice.

Kat goes to a code-along, and asks some questions about the material.

Kat makes a comment on a discussion issue on GitHub.
Kat has been having a hard time finding words in text when there are spelling errors. Kat talks to another group member and realizes there could be a programmatic solution.

5. EMPHASIZE: the end of the pathway can be a very high-level leadership position for some people. Kat is persuaded to join the leadership of UofT Coders, like what happened to Luke and Lina. For example: both of them started out as interested random people, then they came pretty often, each of them had taught a few sessions, they were actively contributing on GitHub to group improvement, so I asked them to form the interim executive team. In addition to one other early contributor who’s not here, since then we’ve added 2 new positions. Our ability to do that is enhanced by the fact that we can have in-person meetings.

My two-cents: if you’re looking for a leader, think of someone who’s already interested and involved and ask them to either keep doing that officially, or to take on more responsibility. If that person doesn’t exist, a persona and pathway could help.

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List of Solutions - Examples

Create and distribute advertising materials to humanities departments
Do a round of introductions or breakouts at every meeting
Collect emails at meetings for follow-up contact
Encourage Q&A and co-working during lessons
Schedule meetings with family commitments in mind
Invite new members to give short talks/lessons
Thank contributors with emojis!
Provide GitHub training to make repo accessible