Who is PostFreely being created for?
It is not possible to create an application for everyone. Trying to build an application for everyone effectively means you build it for no one.
So there needs to be specific types of people we are building PostFreely for.
In the replies to this post we will list, discuss, and describe the archetypes related to, relevant to, or important to PostFreely.
⚠️ This discussion should try to use “neutral” language in its descriptions. ⚠️
Examples
For example —
One type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who use WriteFreely, who like WriteFreely, but wish it had some additional features (such as uploading images, or a way to see replies, etc).
Another type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who like writing in markdown.
Yet another type of person we may be building PostFreely for is — People who want to make their content simultaneously available on the Fediverse and the “smallnet” alt-protocols such as finger, gemini, gopher, HTTP (restricted), mercury, nex, and others.
Etc.
There are many other types of people relevant to PostFreely. The purpose of this discussion is to list out, describe, and discuss these. We will do that in the replies to this post, rather than trying to list them all out here.
Archetype
The name we give to these types of people is archetype.
So —
What are the architypes we are creating PostFreely for?
What are their problems? What do they want?
PostFreely may try to solve some of their problems. PostFreely may try to address some of their wants.
What is an Archetype
archetypes (noun): an idealized model of a number of similar things.
From the point-of-view of industrial-research — an archetype is a model of some aspect of a person shared among many people.
(UX people tend to call “archetypes”: “personas”. And marketers tend to call “archetypes”: “segments”. In practice, all 3 of these are very similar concepts.)
Some examples of (non-Fediverse and non-PostFreely specific) archetypes include:
- father,
- mother,
- son,
- daughter
- brother,
- sister,
- husband,
- wife,
- gardener,
- farmer,
- computer programmer,
- grocery store cashier,
- CEO
- CTO
- etc.
You can also probably already see that an individual could express more than one archetype. For example — a single individual could be — a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a CTO, and a programmer at the same time during a certain span of their life.
The archetypes an individual expresses could also change over their life-time too. For example — before someone has a child, they wouldn’t be a father or a mother yet; but after they have a child, they would (also) become a father, or a mother (in addition to whatever other archetypes they express).
In this discussion we will focus on archetypes relevant or important to PostFreely.
PostFreely Features
Features in PostFreely would usually be tied to a problem or want of an archetype.
And are not just made up arbitrarily.
So understanding the relevant, related, and important archetypes for PostFreely is an important precursor before a roadmap can be created.
Archetype Discovery
Archetypes are discovered. They are not arbitrarily made-up.
Usually archetypes are discovered by analyzing quantitative-data. And often the quantitative-data is data you collect yourself.
Maybe by interviewing people. Maybe by reading discussions on the Fediverse, on forums, and other places. Etc.
(CHARLES NOTE: I have already done research in this area. But like with most research — it is never done, and the research work should be ongoing,)
Let’s discuss.
Who is PostFreely being created for?
What are the architypes we are creating PostFreely for?
What are their problems? What do they want?
Please reply with your thoughts.
⸺ Charles Iliya Krempeaux ( @reiver@mastodon.social )
cc: @mathew@universeodon.com @whylamb@aus.social @SrRochardBunson@universeodon.com
#PostFreely
Another archetype I’ve noticed is what I’ve called —
Information Managers
The way I would describe them is —
People who use these tools to help them think better.
- They want to take notes.
- They want to write their thoughts.
- They want to comment on articles.
- They want to quote things (from texts, audios, and videos).
- They want to record conversations.
- They want to write evergreen summaries.
- They want to post photos.
- They want to post videos.
- They want to post links.
- They want to tag, categorize, re-tag, re-categorize things (including other tags and categories, and not just the quotes and articles).
- So this would mean hierarchical tags
- They want to link between posts.
- They want useful and helpful visualizations of all this.
- They want to search all this.
- They want to be able to filter things by tags and categories.
- They want to be able to filter things by the intersection of multiple tags and categories.
- They want version control.
- They want to rename things (and they don’t want links pointing to that to break).
Some of them will talk about “second brains” or the “zettelkasten method”. Although many (maybe most) will have their own method that they came up with.