User personas

Warning

🚧 Sprout is still in active development and evolving quickly, so the documentation and functionality may not work as described and could undergo substantial changes 🚧

This document describes the different users we expect and design for, as well as some hypothetical user personas.

User types

Owner/creator

The owner is a user who wants to start a research project collecting or storing data and who wants full control over the project. This is also someone who has special needs or requirements, so wants fine-grained control over the structure and design of the data generated and stored from the research project.

Administrator

The administrator is a user who is assigned to manage the research project by the owner. This particular user doesn’t have ownership over the project direction, but may need more control over how the data is processed and structured.

Software developer/data engineer

The software developer or data engineer is a user who wants to build a custom extension of Sprout or who wants complete control over the structuring and processing of the data.

User personas

These purely hypothetical personas help us and readers in understanding the needs of real-world users and their expectations of Sprout.

Software Developer

• Name: Liam O’Connor
• Background: Liam is a software developer with expertise in building and maintaining software. He only recently started working with software that must connect with or use data pipelines. He works in a medium-sized company that started modernizing their data pipelines and infrastructure. He works on integrating various data sources and ensuring the smooth flow of data, so that they can be fed into analytic platforms and dashboards that he helps build and maintain. He is using Sprout because he doesn’t have the time to build a custom solution, nor does he have the expertise to know what the best practices are and what the best tools are to use.
• Goals:
  • To develop and maintain data pipelines for seamless data integration into analytic platforms.
  • To ensure data quality and consistency across different sources.
  • To collaborate with project owners and admins for data requirements and technical support.
• Challenges:
  • He doesn’t yet have the expertise and knowledge to judge how to build modern data infrastructures, so prefers opinionated solutions.
  • He prefers open source software since it makes it easier to integrate with his existing ecosystem of tools.
  • Managing and integrating data from multiple sources.
  • Keeping up with evolving project requirements and technologies.
  • Unsure what standards exist to make it easy to connect the data to other tools and platforms within the company, so prefers to use a tool that has some standards built in.

Data Engineer

• Name: Aisha Khan
• Background: Aisha is a data engineer with a strong background in data architecture, data warehouses, and ETL processes. They are responsible for designing and maintaining the data infrastructure at their small research institution to ensure that data is efficiently stored and structured for easier use later by researchers. They are using Sprout to help organize and manage all the work, which they have to do on their own because of a limited budget.
• Goals:
  • To design and maintain robust data pipelines for efficient data processing, structuring, and storage.
  • To ensure data integrity and security throughout the data lifecycle.
  • To comply with data governance and privacy regulations.
  • To optimize data storage and retrieval for performance and scalability.
  • To collaborate with developers and project owners to meet data requirements.
  • To use best practices in data engineering while having limited resources.
• Challenges:
  • Handling large volumes of different types of data from many different research projects.
  • Having limited time and resources to manage all the tasks, so preferring opinionated and streamlined software.
  • Trying to keep up with new technologies and best practices in data engineering.
  • Troubleshooting and resolving data-related issues promptly.
  • Keeping track of all the different versions of data and metadata that researchers are using.
  • Deleting any participant data that is no longer needed or that the participant has requested to be deleted.

Principle investigator/lead researcher

• Name: Dr. Maria Garcia
• Background: Dr. Garcia is a senior researcher within an academic setting. She has extensive experience in managing research projects and is responsible for overseeing multiple research initiatives. While she has some familiarity with programming, she mainly understands the need to use these tools to work more efficiently and effectively. She also values having control over the projects she is responsible for. She wants to use Sprout to help manage all the data from her research projects so that her research group can more easily use and analyze it.
• Goals:
  • To create and manage data from new research projects in a structured and effective way.
  • To have full control over the research project and its data and metadata.
  • To have an overview of the data and metadata collected and used in the research projects.
  • To comply with privacy and legal requirements applicable to the research data.
  • To make it easier for her research group to use and analyze the data.
• Challenges:
  • Balancing multiple projects and responsibilities, as well as many different people with different needs.
  • Ensuring that the data is accurate and complies with research standards.
  • Keeping track of all the different versions of data and metadata that researchers are using.
  • Maintaining the metadata and coordinating with her group to document everything properly.

Project administrator

• Name: Chen Wei
• Background: Chen Wei is a research data manager with a strong background in data curation and metadata management. He works closely with research project owners to support the technical and administrative aspects of research projects. He wants to use Sprout to make it easier to manage all his assigned projects, while also balancing the specific needs of the different projects and how their data is structured and stored.
• Goals:
  • To assist research project owners in managing the research projects.
  • To handle the technical administration of the projects, users, metadata, and data.
  • To resolve issues related to data quality and user support.
  • To create and update metadata structures for data uploads.
  • To ensure that the data is compliant with privacy and legal requirements.
  • To balance the requirements of the individual projects and their owners with effective data management practices.
• Challenges:
  • Managing the needs of different people and regulations.
  • Working with a limited budget and resources.
  • Providing timely support to data contributors.
  • Managing who works on the metadata documentation and how they can add to it without requiring too much oversight from him.
  • Keeping up with changes in project requirements and metadata structures.