User Research Plan

Fedora's Audience and Why Fedora

Fedora's Target Audience

The target Fedora user audience is people who:

1. are familiar with and comfortable interacting with computers.
2. are not afraid to try something different when it comes to technology.
3. want to change how they work with their computer.
4. are not necessarily computer hackers or developers.
5. participate in online forums such as online shopping product reviews, blogs, or movie fan sites.
6. someone who does not mind submitting a bug report as long as it's not too time-consuming.
7. are active users of the web, having accounts on a wide range of web-based applications.
8. use their computer to produce content, whether it's an expense report for work or a photo slideshow of the kids for Grandpa.

Why Fedora?

Fedora enables people worldwide to enjoy and contribute to free and open source technology without requiring them to be computer hackers or developers. It allows them to accomplish every day personal and work-related tasks in a safe and secure manner, presenting them with a selection of the best-of-the-best free and open source software to get the job done, either pre-installed or easily installed when needed. Fedora also makes it easy for people to put their own mark on the free and open source software community, whether its participating in a user forum or filing a bug to make free and open source software better for everyone. Fedora makes free and open source software fun and easy to integrate into their lives.

Guesstimation of Top 10 User Tasks

Based on our target audience definition alone, here is a guesstimation at the Top 10 User Tasks we'll want to support. Keep in mind that these may change based on findings in user research. Some of theseare also ob-board specific tasks.

Tasks

1. Decide whether or not to download Fedora.
2. Download and install Fedora, and personalize it, configuring email, bookmarks, wallpaper, etc.etc.
3. File a bug with Fedora. Follow up on the bug and take a look at its progress.
4. Take a photo of the kids and send it to Grandpa.
5. While on a business trip, make a video call to your boyfriend/girlfriend.
6. Print out invitations to your holiday party, including directions and mailing labels for the envelopes.
7. Create a mix of tunes, save it for later use, and burn it to CD for an upcoming roadtrip.
8. Get live help with Fedora.
9. Find a good meeting time and book an appointment on your calendar for a business meeting.
10. Write and send in your weekly status report for work, and figure out what you should work on today.

Defining Success

Success for Users

• Fedora has the functionality they need to get the job done.
• Fedora is not painful to use in getting the job done.
• Fedora is enjoyable to use, and 'cool.' They *want* to use it and are happy with it.

Success for the Fedora Project

• More bug reports!
• More posts on Fedora-related user forums, and more activity and blog posts and general discussion of Fedora online and off.
• More downloads of Fedora. Increased traffic to the website.
• Increased awareness and mindshare of Fedora and free & open source sofware in general.

Stakeholders

Stakeholder	Goals and Questions
Fedora Board	?
Fedora Desktop Team	?
Fedora QA	?
Fedora Design Team	?
Fedora Release Engineering	?
Fedora Marketing Team	?
Fedora Ambassadors	?
Fedora Spins Maintainers	?
Fedora Infrastructure Team	?
Fedora Documentation Team	?
Fedora Websites Team	?
Fedora Help forums (#fedora, fedoraforum.org, Fedora Unity)	?
Current Fedora contributors	?