REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK: User roles to capture during drupal.org registration

To me this sounds very useful. Before defining the roles, we probably should agree upon the usefulness.

@drumm Any technical barriers?

Hi Alex,

this is a great idea. Knowing the user better and monitoring trends would be invaluable. It has previously occurred to me how this gap exists. Here are a few of the types of persona I would imagine may register based on my experience working in agencies and with end users (clients) and others for good measure.

• Site owner
• Content manager
• Content strategist
• SEO
• Evaluator - someone looking at Drupal as a potential option as end user. Nurturing this type of visitor would be highly beneficial
• Journalist - surely the DA would love to spot these?
• Influencer
• IT manager
• Quality Assurance Manager
• Solutions Architect
• Student - another obvious person to target specific content for
• User Experience Designer

This and maybe other personas means you can be more granular, but group them into buckets for personalisation. Because you have the more granular detail, this can be used for other purposes yet to be realised. It's not exhaustive but hopefully it stimulates thought.

I'd be wary of using "Other non software related role" as this may infer that these are users we are not interested in. At the moment they are registering we want to create a warm welcome. This could be our next great contributor, you just don't know. That's why I have proposed the likes of QA, Content manager, Content strategist etc. As Drupal and the wider web has matured, these roles have become invaluable disciplines.

You might want to consider, if this is for content targeting, to ask another question "What is your level of knowledge with Drupal?" or "What is your primary motivation to register?" this could further inform content targeting.

Do we want to add the field to make available to existing users so we can retrospectively capture these insights?

Paul, my friend. Your experience and knowledge is always welcomed, and your feedback greatly appreciated. Those are great points :-D

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write this :-)

a +1 to avoid an option called Other non software related role. But I wonder if it would make sense to simply ask a broader range of users across different channels (on and offline) what is the role they actually identify with and base the list of options on those results?

We can be quite granular, but I would say that users should be able to select multiple options if that is the case. I can hardly say I would be able to select only one from the list and the option Developer is not even there.

Since this is for new registrations, I think we should rephrase the question like Paul already mentioned: "What is your primary motivation" or "What areas of Drupal are you most interested in" etc. With that I think we should omit roles like Evaluator or Student. Because evaluator can be developer, business owner, influencer etc. Same goes with student. We want to know what is the students or evaluator final goal when registering. This way we get a good base for content targeting later on.

So I'm thinking if it's possible to divide this to two inputs, I would say that the first one is what is your motivation, what areas are you interested in. And then the next question would be your current level of knowledge (new / evaluating, already used it, lots of experience ...).

To finish, I'm also wondering if you plan to add this for existing users as well? In my opinion it should be possible.

Really good proposal!

And thanks @pdjohnson for taking into account the design world! You suggested "User Experience Designer", but that's just a part of the whole area. I would suggest something along the lines: "UX designer, UI Designer".

I strongly agree with @pdjohnson.

Also, incorporating a short survey to gauge user experience level and specific interests in Drupal could enrich the data collected, leading to better contribution opportunities.

This approach could encourage mentoring programs and contribution opportunities early on.

What about front-end developer and/or themer?

Love this, thanks

Developer Relations
Drupal Contributor

I agree that "Other non software related role" might want to be avoided.

I think we already have a list of those "areas" for when registering to DrupalCon? Maybe good to cross-check those as well as what is suggested here.

Personally I would also add a DevOps/hosting/server admin related one.