#  Personas

Personas are fictional characters that represent the different users we expect to interact with FlowForge as a brand and/or platform. Personas are a generalized way of talking about the ideal target we are aiming to communicate with and design for.

Personas help us not only define our messaging and marketing delivery, but also our product. Keeping personas in mind allows us to use the correct language and make the best decisions to address their specific problems and pain points. At FlowForge, we have many personas that will evolve over time:

#  Manufacturing Inc.
#  Startup Inc.
#  Others

#  Persona Template

#  Profile

  • Name: Naming your Persona is very important to increase empathy with them. Having them named is shown to make relating to their situation easier to do, and result in better prodict decisions.
  • Picture: What does the persona look like? Choose a realistic and believable picture.
  • Age: Choose a realistic age for the persona, this can also be a range if needs be, but try to keep it fairly precise.

#  Details

  • Occupation: What is their professional occupation? This doesn't have to correlate directly to why they're a Persona, but can play a very important role defining them.
  • Purchasing Role: Where in the hierarchy of a purchasing decision do they sit, and to what scale could we expect such a decision to bring in financially?
  • Technical Skillset: This is a FlowForge-specific characteristic we've introduced for our Personas. It's important as a low-code platform to consider technical skillsets, that developers or those in the technical industry such as ourselves may take for granted, and even how they've learned their technical skillset, should they have one.
  • Node-RED Experience: Another FlowForge-specific detail. This helps us frame the sales/marketing strategy for this Persona, and will also frame explanations of what FlowForge is and does.
  • Additional information: A catch-all for any other remarks or comments to be made for the persona.

#  Behaviours

  • Interests: What personal and professional interests does this person have?

  • Motivations: Why does this persona do what they do? What drives them?

  • Influences: Where do they get their opinions from? What sources of information influence their own decision making?

  • Needs & Expectations: What does this persona need in their day-to-day life to help them? What are their baseline expectiations for what "good" or "valuable" looks like?

#  Goals

What problem does the persona want to solve, or which benefit does the character seek? Why would the persona want to use or buy FlowForge?

  • Job To Be Done: In the context of the persona, what are they trying to achieve?
  • Challenges: What are their regular blockers and pain points when trying to work towards their goals?

#  Persona Profiles

#  Paul, Plant Manager

52
Plant Manager/Exec, Manufacturing Inc.
Final Decision Maker. >$50k. High Influence
Mechanical Engineering, MEng
Never heard of it
  • Responsible for the overall production and profit of the products
  • Sets guidelines for investments and serves as the final decision-making authority
  • Responsible for growth of the plant
  • Ongoing investment planning and budget setting for new machines and new employees
  • Prepares meaningful KPIs together with the production planner
  • Wants the factory to run smoothly
  • Wants to improve the economic and future situation of the plant
  • Data & facts
  • Conferences
  • LinkedIn
  • Network
  • Easy access to reporting
  • Transparency
  • Creating an innovative factory
  • Improve the economic situation

#  Isabella, IIoT Project Lead

32
Project Manager / Team Lead, Manufacturing Inc.
$7k, High Influence
Business Computer Science (MSc)
Has seen Node-RED implemented in factories
  • Reports to Paul
  • Definition of IT/OT architecture on machine, line, plant and global level
  • Coordination and handover to Operations for operation of software components
  • Define and implement connectivity of machines
  • Interface between IT department and OT departments
  • Provide added value
  • See IIoT topics growing
  • LinkedIn
  • Conferences
  • Podcasts
  • Personal Network
  • Tools that interacts with industrial equipment and can provide data to other software applications
  • Easy way to visualize data
  • Stable and high available software
  • Identifying added value for production
  • Establishing IIoT standards

#  Peter, PLC Engineer

42
PLC Engineering Team Lead, Manufacturing Inc.
$7k, Medium Influence
Mechanical Engineering (BEng)
Never heard of it
  • Works alongside Isabella
  • Management of a team responsible for planning, design, and programming of PLCs
  • Conception, specification, and programming of PLC software and hardware
  • Connection of the control systems to other systems and implementation of process adjustments
  • Management of the commissioning of machines and production lines and controlling of compliance with software standards in the application
  • Central contact for control technology
  • Having a satisfied team and highly motivated employees
  • Establishing "IIoT" (instruction from the boss)
  • LinkedIn
  • Trainings
  • Wants easy ways to provide PLC data to other systems
  • Not being afraid of new things
  • Easy way to provide PLC data to other systems

#  Sahib, Startup CTO

33
CTO, New Startup Inc.
High Influence
Computer Science (MSc)
Using it extensively in New Startup Inc
  • Lead the technology vision, strategy, innovation, and execution for the organization
  • Monitor technology sector changes
  • Contributing to solving real problemss
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Personal Network
  • Has a startup budget, wants to get the most value for money
  • Needs to deliver value rapidly and be able to react to change
  • Wants to rent cloud/saas services
  • Self-Service
  • Fast first response time from support, fast turn around times on issues. Direct communications
  • “Just needs to work” out of the box
  • Hands on when first using FlowForge/Node-RED
  • Not being afraid of new things
  • Easy way to provide PLC data to other systems

#  Danielle, Developer

24
Software Developer
Not Decision Maker, Small Influence
Computer Science & AI (BSc)
Aware of it, but not used it
  • Works for Sahib
  • Drive application and product development activities
  • Choosing the technology/tools I use to do my work
  • Being paid to do her job
  • Getting a "that is cool" response from her boss for something she has built
  • Building things that work
  • Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Discord Communities
  • Colleagues
  • Stack Overflow
  • Personal Network
  • Understanding how Node-RED works internally to get the most out of it.
  • Confidence the platform she’s being told to use is stable and suitable for the task
  • A modern set of development tools and processes - version control, CI/CD
  • Increasing speed of development
  • Prefers to write code - not sure why low-code is being used
  • Poor documentation for the 10’s of APIs she has to work with

#  Harry, Hobbyist

52
Practical Engineer (not software)
Low Budget
Self-Taught
Active member of the Node-RED Community
  • Publish Content about what he builds
  • Personal automations, lifehacks
  • Fun
  • Show of cool features to friends and families:”Look, I can do X from my phone now”
  • Just enjoys learning new things
  • Prefers to build over buy
  • Maker Community - Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Discord Communities, Reddit, Magazines, Fairs
  • Things that are "cool"
  • Personal Network
  • Price sensitive - this is a hobby - Node-RED is free.
  • “Older” hardware should remain to be integrating with the rest of their home
  • Expect things to work
  • Easy ways to set up new things
  • Integrations break ‘over time’. Other family members are annoyed as their lives aren’t better than before anymore, but worse.
  • Doesn’t know Git, or follow development methodolgies
  • Doesn’t want to spend time maintaining things
  • Backups, breaking things and not having an undo
  • Always asked to fix other peoples technology problems