The future of selections and masks in Krita

[Bart Coppens]

On Tuesday 01 August 2006 16:12, Thomas Zander wrote:
> If you can not find a persona that actually _uses_ the
> feature, then you are just coding for yourself and nobody will like the
> application any more because of it
Ah, I forgot something that kinda bothers me about this whole persona thing, 
actually (other than letting it the be-all end-all of Krita design).

It's all good fun that we have these personas, but then we have to decide 
stuff based on them. The problem I have with this is the following. From what 
I understand, a persona is some kind of 'standard/default' user of a certain 
kind, who represents a large class of target users. You can very nicely 
define these classes of users. But none of us is actually a 'Amateur 
photographer' (that we could argue about, but not:), a 'Professional photo 
retoucher' or a 'Original artwork creator'.
We can scream and yell that X would do this, and Y would never try that, but 
it's a completely wild guess. Real life users never behave quite like you 
would expect, and I don't think aggregated classes of users would be a big 
exception to that.

In my opinion, the only sound way to decide stuff based on 'the average 
Original Artwork Creator' would want to use feature X and Y, but not action 
Z, would be to actually _ask_ random people (and not just a single person) 
that you consider to fall in that class. Everything else is just people 
trying to imagine something they probably have no experience with at all. 
(Yes, there are amateur photographers amongst us, I like to play around with 
photos myself a bit, and some of us like to paint, or retouch photos. But one 
developer isn't the average case.)

The best real insight into any people's minds I can get is when they come and 
ask for features on irc or by mail. Then I know: aha! some people would want 
this or that. Actual (other) people have a definite use for it. I can start 
imagining that I am a professional movie director, and would want to see that 
KDE's (fictional?) video editing application pays attention to my persona. 
But as long as I don't actually get a professional director's study and 
experience, it's just me with a very (good or bad, you fill in) imagination.

I have no problem with either saying that your personas will need feature X 
and hence we should have it, or that developer Y would really like at, and 
hence we should have it. But with a developer wanting a feature it's a clear 
fact: he wants it. But with persona it's just guessing around as long as you 
don't ask people.

In retrospect this comes off a bit angrier than I actually am, but it 
describes my problem with it. Note that this might come because I didn't 
actually read that inmates book, and hence fail to grasp the concept 
completely :-(.

Bart