I was just going through some work I did a few months back and found some personas I wrote based off of some interviews with (mostly) Drupal developers. I ended up finding similarities to some drupal.org personas written in 2007, so I used the names and some of the language to write my own.

Out of the 22 people interviewed they mostly fell into three environments – academic/non-profit, a web development shop and a kind of super-hobbyist (meaning, they do a lot of web development in their free time). There were a couple solo freelancers, but I’d want to interview more to seriously stand behind that persona (Danielle).

TIM THE TOOL USER

Profile: Tim doesn’t have formal training in programming, but he geeks out on learning new things and likes to set time aside when he’s not at work to pursue projects he feels will be of value to his community. Recently he’s come up with what he thinks is a great new idea for a social networking site, and wants to put some of his new PHP skills to use.

Relationship to Drupal: He’s excited by the community and hopes to contribute one day. Occasionally he finds a bug or an error he doesn’t know how to fix, and spends what he feels like is way too much time on the Drupal site and in forums. If he can’t find a solution, he’ll just learn to live without the module, or even the functionality.

Goals

• Feel capable of solving the issues as they arise
• Feel supported by his immediate web community
• See his ideas come to life
• See evidence of people interacting with his site
• Create an active, popular website
• Build a site he thinks looks and works right
• Earn a supplemental income

WENDY THE WEBMASTER

Profile: Wendy has worked with CMS’s before, and just took on a new job in an academic environment to manage the website. Her first task is to redesign the old site in Drupal, which was chosen a few months back by her boss. Her boss helps her in planning, and she has two part time students available to help out with the tech when needed. While her job primarily consists of working on the site, she finds herself in a lot of meetings. She feels fortunate however that it’s a pretty low risk environment – as long as she doesn’t rock the boat her deadlines aren’t cut-throat. She can read code and do a little design, but she really enjoys figuring out how to organize and structure information for the users.

Relationship to Drupal: Wendy really appreciates all that Drupal can do, but she really wishes that some modules were better documented – she’s under a lot of pressure to add certain kinds of functionality and there’s not much budget to do it. Sometimes she’ll post a question on a forum, but otherwise sticks to reading through what she can find online. She hasn’t had much time to really consider getting involved in the community.

Goals

• Feel like she has the work under control and on time
• Discover exciting, dynamic new tools to learn and incorporate into the website
• Come up with clever and efficient ways to structure all of the data
• Build a site that users really care about
• Manage her communities expectations about the site

DAN THE DEVELOPER

Profile: Dan is a code-monkey who primarily builds custom Drupal modules for sites his company makes for clients, but lately he’s taken over a bigger role on some smaller sites – communicating with clients and building the entire site himself.  Dan has a lot of resources to draw on in his small company to help him with his expanded role, from a project manager, to an Information Architect, to other programmers like himself.

Relationship to Drupal: Dan’s a big fan – he’s been using Drupal and involved with the community for several years now. He feels pretty at ease with at all – but really gets annoyed when there’s a change in the module that disrupts his typical way of getting things done.

Goals

• Feel like the work is under control in a fast paced environment
• Feel smart and clever (and in control) with clients
• Develop a site that pleases his clients
• Feel like he’s contributed something new or special
• Feel part of a community

DANIELLE THE WEB DESIGNER

Profile: Danielle has been working freelance with small business and non-profit clients for several years now. She has an arts background and is self taught (and very proficient) with XHTML, CSS, some JavaScript and visual design. She’s started using CMS’s to help her maintain her clients’ websites. She spends a lot of time with her clients sites, and feels very personally involved with their success.

Relationship to Drupal: Danielle reluctantly moved to Drupal because of a client’s request, but she’s becoming more intrigued as she learns the interface and understands the functionality available. As a late-comer to CMS’s, she’s happy to not have to maintain a static site any longer. Problem solving is intimidating for her though – there’s a lot of information out there and she’s intimidated by the “gear-heads” in some of the forums.

Goals

• Manage her clients expectations
• Ensure a successful, attractive site for her client
• Learn new skills
• Earn a living doing work she enjoys independently

I’d say these are still a work in progress. Becuase I wasn’t focusing on d.o while writing I’m not going to be bold and edit the wiki