But there’s one thing that keeps them at arm’s length: “The researcher,” “The Sysadmin,” “The OSS Developer,” “The CS Student.” It is common practice for personas to be given these kinds of user type labels but that practice diminishes our ability to empathize.
It might seem like a small thing, but the moment these folks are typed they become members of a class, and their identities are now of being in those groups — and you start referring to that persona as “the Sysadmin” and not “Donald.” It doesn’t take much to go from typing to stereotyping–”Sysadmins want these kinds of features”–and once that happens, empathy is lost.
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