So, Francesca, Luisa, and Alessandro. Those names just popped into my head today. They were part of this thing I worked on a while back.
We were trying to understand who actually uses the stuff we build. You know, put a face to the data. Management called it ‘persona development’. Seemed a bit fluffy to me at first, honestly.
Getting Started with It
First, we had piles of feedback forms, some survey results, and a few scattered interview notes. My job was to sift through all that mess. I spent days just reading comments, trying to spot patterns. It wasn’t glamorous work, mostly highlighting text and making endless lists.
Then came the tricky part: trying to group these vague ideas into actual ‘people’. We had a few workshops. Lots of sticky notes on the wall, lots of coffee. We argued a bit, you know, about whether ‘our user’ was more likely to be cautious or adventurous, tech-savvy or a total newbie. It’s funny how you can argue passionately about someone who doesn’t exist.
We eventually boiled it down to three main types. And we had to give them names. That’s where Francesca, Luisa, and Alessandro came in. Someone just threw them out there, and they stuck. We wrote up little biographies for them:
- Francesca: The careful planner, always reads the manual.
- Luisa: The busy one, just wants things to work, no fuss.
- Alessandro: The enthusiast, loves trying new features, gives lots of feedback.
We made little cards with their pictures (stock photos, of course) and key traits. Put them up on the wall. The idea was to constantly ask, “What would Francesca think of this?” or “Would this annoy Luisa?”
Did it Work? Well…
Honestly? Sometimes it felt helpful. Like a reminder that real people were on the other end. Other times, it felt like we were just talking to ourselves, using these names as stand-ins for our own opinions. It’s easy to make ‘Alessandro’ agree with whatever cool new feature you want to build.
It’s strange how these made-up names hang around in your memory though. Francesca, Luisa, Alessandro. Just names on a project file somewhere now, I guess.
Reminds me of this other place I worked years ago. Completely different field. We had this old system, really ancient stuff, and buried in the code were comments left by programmers from like, the 80s. They’d put their names in there, sometimes little jokes or complaints. Dave, Sarah, Mike. Never met them, probably retired or moved on decades ago. But seeing their names there, it felt like a little connection to the past, like ghosts in the machine.
You work on things, you name things, whether it’s user personas or variables in code, and then you move on. But sometimes the names stick around longer than the project itself. Just a weird thought I had today, thinking about Francesca, Luisa, and Alessandro.
