Gervase Markham wrote:
> 
> http://www.mozilla.org.uk/docs/personae/
> 
> This is my contribution to the "Who is Mozilla's target user?" debate.
> Comments welcome :-)
>...

You say this was inspired by Alan Cooper's /The inmates are running the
asylum/, but only one of your four personas (Ling) is a `user' as Cooper
would understand the term.

You appear to be describing people using the Mozilla *code*, rather than
those using a *product* which includes the code. That's an
understandable approach, but it is prone to severe bias. For example,
the number of Lings (Mozilla testers/hackers) will surely be an order of
magnitude greater than the number of Hanses (ISP distributors). Does
that mean that Mozilla should concentrate on pleasing the Lings more
than it concentrates on pleasing the Hanses? I hope not, since Hans will
get Mozilla user agents used by far more people than Ling will.

I described the users I'm designing for back in December
<http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3C177E3F.A3FD2891%40mailandnews.com&rnum=2>.

I doubt that Hans will be able to afford enough of an investment in
Mozilla that he can either (1) deploy XUL account maintenance apps, or
(2) hack Mozilla's XUL to remove unwanted menu/toolbar items. While
Mozilla may be the ISP's default browser, they can't afford to lock out
the fraction of customers who prefer browsers which don't support XUL,
especially since (given Mozilla's current rate of improvement) that
fraction will be very high for the next couple of years at least.

Finally, do you have Ling's phone number?

(Kidding ...)

-- 
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component default assignee thing
<http://mpt.phrasewise.com/>

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