User advocates

[duckinator]

An idea suggested by @juliepagano in #49 (comment) is having "user advocates."

Quote from her comment:

I think user advocates need to be people who are a bit more separated from the core structure of the company. Someone who is heavily invested can often feel the need to direct the user's conversations a certain way, take criticism personally, or even try to argue with the user. Think of doing user studies - it's often best when the developer of a feature doesn't run the study because they can be a bit too invested. Ideally, a user advocate is having a conversation with the user and learning about their wants, needs, concerns, etc. - they are listening and collecting information. They can then summarize that information, present it to developers, and advocate for changes that will value those users. It would be useful to have advocates who understand and have experience with the demographics you want to engage with (e.g. feminist activists, members of various marginalized groups, artists, OSS developers), so that they have a better sense of how to have meaningful dialogue with them.

[duckinator]

Since I seem to keep falling back from actual development work into a role similar to this, I'll step up and be Gittip's first User Advocate. However, we need more than one UA. We should formalize what exactly being a UA entails, have guidelines for when user advocates should be pulled in (e.g.: the discussion on #49), and have some guidelines for how they should interact with users. Once that's done, we should explain this somewhere on www.gittip.com and allow people to contact user advocates directly.

The way I see it, a user advocate's roles include (in no particular order):

• translating user needs into actionable tasks for the rest of the team (the most recent example: creating this issue, as well as a few other issues from the discussion on process Shanley's feedback #49).
• helping people who @mention Gittip on Twitter (and equivalent things on various social networks), and/or bringing them to the attention of other team members if appropriate (this would offload some of the work from whoever manages the Gittip Twitter account). We do not want to blindly jump in any time the word "Gittip" is mentioned—let's not be one of those companies.

User advocates should not be heavily involved in the development of the core product. E.g., I am involved far more with widgets and general discussion than the development of www.gittip.com, so I don't feel it's out of place for me to be a UA. If someone disagrees, please let me know.

Once we have a proper team (meaning two—or, preferably, more—people are UAs), I feel we should start shifting things so that they're the initial line of support. The UAs would effectively be gathering as much information as is necessary, and then pulling in the appropriate people for things. For example:

• payments-related stuff. I know @whit537 is involved with this. Who else?
• technical stuff — including creating a GH issue on their behalf, if appropriate. Worth note is that when creating an issue, default to anonymously doing it. Ask permission before identifying who reported the issue, even if it was done on a public medium such as Twitter.
• miscellaneous: everything else, including things such as process Shanley's feedback #49. A lot of this will be handled mostly by the UAs, pulling in other people as they feel is appropriate. This section will need to be expanded significantly (likely split into more sections).

I'm not sure how security things should be handled. However, I don't think passing them to UAs would be appropriate.

@juliepagano @ncoghlan: do you two have any input on this? Do you think I'm taking it in the right direction?

(cc: @whit537 @rummik @patcon @bruceadams @pjf; ping anyone else you think needs to be, or may want to be, involved in this discussion.)

[bmann]

It's fine if we call this a new name (a UA) -- but this is essentially user research into the different personas that Gittip supports. I'm going to do this for companies. Although I'm also going to try to "sell" them on using Gittip -- the first part will be understanding what their needs are and if Gittip provides a solution for some of them.

I'm making some edits to "Onboarding Yourself" -- I'll add a UA section.

[duckinator]

@bmann I noticed while poking around (namely on the wikipedia article) that there's actually two different definitions for "User Advocate:" there's the people who talk directly to the users, and there's also the personas that you mentioned. Or are they actually just different aspects of the same job?

[ncoghlan]

Not really the same job - one emphasises the ability to communicate effectively with users and understand their needs and get their immediate concerns addressed, while the other is more a system designer role, and emphasises the ability to communicate effectively with developers to get changes made to a product or system. You could combine them (just as team lead and technical lead roles can be combined), but would be lucky to find a single individual that could handle both aspects well.

For the latter role, user advocates that are involved in persona design are about dealing with "users" as an abstraction. While there are many users with slightly different needs, there's (usually) only one product, so personas are about identifying certain archetypes that may have significantly different interests and needs, and taking them into account when making design decisions. I've generally seen that role put under the banner of "user experience design", rather than user advocacy, but I can see why people would use the "advocate" label for it.

What I was more referring to in the other issue was the more support oriented "listening directly to users and relaying their feedback anonymously when appropriate" user advocacy role. First and foremost, that's an empathetic role - it involves a lot of listening to people, and responding to them based on where they're at. Sometimes that will involve gently letting them know the reasons why things are the way they are, other times it will involve acting as a mediator between them and the developers. A lot of the time, the line will blur between this and community management roles (the case can actually be made that it is a community management role).

[duckinator]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.

I think going with something like "UX Designer" instead of "User Advocate" for that would make more sense, to avoid confusion.

[ncoghlan]

Yes, adding both "UX Designer" and "User Advocacy" roles to the onboarding docs would help make it clear that Gittip needs people interested in both of those things. In many cases, the likely flow of feedback would actually be users->advocates->designers->developers, just because of the different skill sets and perspectives involved at each stage. The advocates provide a buffer to protects users interests (e.g. anonymity), while the designers help provide a translation layer between the development team and the community at large.

[bmann]

OK, I did a first pass edit on the onboarding doc -- https://github.com/gittip/building.gittip.com/blob/master/www/policies/onboard-yourself.spt

I created a "design" heading, under which everything from pixel-design to UX to user advocacy to research COULD go.

If you want to talk about inclusion, this page -- http://building.gittip.com/policies/train-new-contributors -- on basically telling people who can't figure out IRC to get the the heck out -- is really off-putting.

@whit537 I propose that any "write this up" ticket be on building going forward, so we can aggregate people-who-write/edit/etc. stuff on building vs. www. Goes back to my other commentary about www vs. building, and lots of the writing centric stuff being on building, including about, etc.

[chadwhitacre]

Awesome, thanks @bmann! BTW we have automatic deployment for BG configured thanks to @patcon, so your changes are live (does take a few minutes after editing):

http://building.gittip.com/policies/onboard-yourself

[chadwhitacre]

Copying over more of @juliepagano's comments from #49 (comment) where she first introduced the UA idea:

I think it is useful to look at what happened in my feature request from a few months back. That was a case of me interacting with potential users of the system, hearing their feedback, and then advocating for it.

The people I got that feedback from would have likely recoiled and been upset if my response to their concerns was "let's do an open call about this" instead of having a more private conversation where I was able to do a lot of listening and understand their needs. I think they also would have been frustrated navigating some of the back and forth that happened on the issue on gittip (mostly useful discussion from a company/development standpoint, but not necessarily something a user wants to engage with). In that situation I acted as a sort of "user advocate," and I think that may be a useful model for handling similar situations in the future.

[chadwhitacre]

@juliepagano So to be clear: was gratipay/gratipay.com#1683 a success or a failure or something in between from your point of view?

[chadwhitacre]

I appreciate the distinction between "UX Designer" and "User Advocate." I think we need another distinction, too: what's the difference between a "User Advocate" and "Customer Support"?

We already have customer support. We use Freshdesk. You can see who has access, and on the calendar you can see who is on level 1 support duty week by week.

The way @juliepagano functioned on gratipay/gratipay.com#1683 seems different than customer support. For one, she's not on the Gittip payroll. Second, she doesn't have access to Freshdesk. She engaged us on GitHub, as a spokesperson for a group of users from a community she is a part of. She mediated the relationship between Gittip and a community that's using Gittip. To me, that's the essence of the user advocate role.

[juliepagano]

@whit537 I think it was ultimately a success because the feature was implemented.

Some of the interactions on the thread itself were frustrating to me as a user trying to make a feature request. It's worth noting I only felt ok sticking with it, arguing, and pushing forward because I know many of the folks involved in gittip. I think someone who didn't know many of you would've been frustrated and given up.

Looking back over the thread, only one person was significantly adding to that frustration, and it looks like they're not even a member of the gittip org. At the time, I didn't think to check on that, and their active insistence and participation made me think they were speaking as part of the organizer group. I think that's something for folks to consider for future interactions with users on issues.

That all being said, if you're having user advocates in the future, they'll have signed up for these sorts of interactions and have a better sense of the organizational structure, so they can navigate it better. If I had signed up for that role for this interaction, I think I would've seen it largely as a success.

[chadwhitacre]

"The Gittip payroll" is a somewhat new-ish reality that I think is important to recognize here. For our first year, we were really loosey goosey about who was "internal" working on Gittip and who was "external," a user. While I hope and trust that we'll always have a vibrant user community beyond our payroll, the reality is that we do have a firm boundary now, since launching the Teams feature: as of right now, there are 38 people on the Gittip payroll. @juliepagano isn't one of them. To be honest, I was disappointed when I went to check and found she wasn't. Iirc, she was on the Gittip team during the first iteration of the feature, but never ended up back on when we rolled out Teams v2 (the current version).

@juliepagano I would like to say that I love gratipay/gratipay.com#1683. It's one of my favorite tickets. I love that you made that ticket, not me (I've created 56% of the issues on the www.gittip.com repo). I love that you stuck with us through such a long and somewhat heavy conversation. Beyond that ticket, I really appreciate how you've taken me aside from time to time to let me know how my behavior is coming across to people in your community. Thank you. :-)

It doesn't feel right to me that you're not part of the Gittip team. Why? Because you and your community are significantly helping Gittip grow, and right now it feels like we're taking advantage of your work by not giving you a take of the Gittip team's funds each week.

I can understand wanting to stay off the Gittip payroll in order to be "a bit more separated." On the other hand, I want Gittip to be diverse from the inside out! We have ~four women on the team right now, out of 38 (10%). From the perspective of "diversity in tech," Gittip is no different than any other company: we need diversity! Half our team should be women! Etc.! I see you as someone who could really help us with that.

So I want to extend an invitation to join the team and help us with diversity, but please don't feel an obligation! I really appreciate the work you've done to make Gittip successful so far, and I'll gladly continue to collaborate with you on whatever terms you choose. I'm afraid that you (and others) will resent the work you're doing to grow Gittip despite not being on the payroll. You are invited to be on the payroll! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

help us with diversity

And, ya know, javascript. :-) I would actually love to see any intentional diversity initiatives we undertake focus on actually getting stuff done. Let's talk explicitly about diversity as much as we need to, and let's build awesome stuff together as a diverse team! :-)

Like, can we organize a Gittip install party with GDI, or something? Probably worth a new thread ...

[juliepagano]

@whit537 I'd be happy to be added to the team and be a bit more involved when I have the time. I don't think being on the payroll would change my behavior much, but it would signal that the work is important and that I'm a contributing member of the team, which is nice.

The user advocate issue probably isn't the right place for us to discuss how I'd like to be involved in more detail. I'll give it some thought and reach out to discuss in more detail later.

[chadwhitacre]

speaking as part of the organizer group

The meaning of "open company" to me is that there is a fuzzy boundary between "users" and "organizers." Everyone who decides to voice an opinion about Gittip is an organizer in my eyes. If it were practical, I would invite everyone who says anything ever anywhere about Gittip to join the payroll.

Which is to say that whoever it was that was frustrating you is probably also welcome on that thread, from my pov. Now, if the exchange were to boil over beyond frustration into harassment, then—assuming I hadn't already intervened—I would accept private feedback to that effect and I hope I would intervene.

But it's also to say that you don't need to relate to Gittip as a "user" if you don't want to. Even if you're not on the payroll, you are invited to think of yourself as an organizer and owner of Gittip if you want to. :-)

The only requirement to be an organizer of Gittip is a stomach for the sort of conversation we had on gratipay/gratipay.com#1683. And, ya know, a computer and time and English and ... oh well. :-/

[chadwhitacre]

I'd be happy to be added to the team and be a bit more involved when I have the time.

That makes me very, very happy. Thank you. :-)

Added! :D

I also added you as a collaborator on GitHub. You should have permissions on both this repo and www.gittip.com now.

Thanks @juliepagano! Welcome (back) aboard! :D

[chadwhitacre]

Twitter

[chadwhitacre]

@juliepagano I should've asked for permission before tweeting, sorry. Do you need me to delete that?

[chadwhitacre]

Taking your lack of a RT as non-consent, I've deleted that tweet. Sorry.

[juliepagano]

@whit537 I think it'd be better for us to chat about the diversity-focused piece of my role before heavily advertising my involvement. One thing I don't want is for my involvement to be (or to appear to be) the "diversity" checkbox being ticked, especially in contrast with some of the other conversations you've had with people recently. I'll follow up with you via email because that is a conversation I'd rather have outside of a github issue.

[chadwhitacre]

@juliepagano Sounds good, thanks! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Okay! Back on topic ... I've stubbed out an "Advocate for Users" doc. Is that pointed in the right direction, @duckinator @juliepagano et al.? If so let's close this ticket and iterate directly with edits to that doc.