Roles versus personas in software development

Software development often emphasises the function of a role over the individuals carrying it out. This extends to requirements gathering, where roles are predefined sets of behaviours and responsibilities.

An example of a role-based user story would go: "As a nurse, I want to administer medication so that patients receive their prescribed treatments," where nurse is categorised as a clinician on the system.

Research by Polman and Emich in 2001 suggests that we're more creative when making decisions for others than for ourselves.

The first-person language of a user story can mislead us to believe that I can imagine accurately what the needs of our users are.

While user stories serve a purpose in defining solution details, there are many more techniques in the UX toolkit for requirements gathering that promote creative problem-solving such as thinking styles, Mental models, Persona stories or jobs-to-be-done.

All notes