Not Your Average User
This week at Leeds Testing Atelier, I presented a talk designed to challenge assumptions made about the "average user" and highlight methods and questions to communicate these to development teams.
In my research, I created 4 personas; Jessica (the average American), Sarah (the average Brit), Joe (the average dev) and Becky (the average test engineer).
This section of the talk was based on a vlog brothers video on the average American who is 38 years old, and because more women were born than men, in 1986, her name is Jessica. Next to her, we have the average Brit – a 40-year-old woman with the most popular name in 1984, Sarah. The average qualification level for each country is about equal with Jessica holding an associate’s degree and (according to the last UK census) Sarah holding a Level 3 qualification. Both women are white and in a heterosexual relationship with a man; Jessica is married whereas Sarah and her partner are co-habiting. In the US, the average household size is 2.5 and in the UK it is 2.3, which suggests both are reasonably likely to be Mothers, but Jessica is more likely to still have a child living at home. Living with them, Americans typically have 1.46 pets, and these are more likely to be dogs than cats. This is similar to the UK statistics with 57% of UK households having a pet and 31% of British households having atleast one dog. These households have an average household income of $74.5k and just shy of £70k – which is weighted by the age of the household reference person (not the most common employment sectors for each country).
So how does this compare to my “average” development team?
The developers I work with are typically younger and hold higher level qualifications than the average person in the UK. This doesn’t mean they are smarter and this isn’t a brag, this is just a UK trend of younger people staying in education compared to other generations.
Test engineers are typically more highly educated again, perhaps due to the fact that they are typically older (have had more time to gain more education) or are career changers.
Younger people are more likely to live alone when they enter higher earning professions and comparing average Glassdoor salaries (for software engineers and test engineers) to national statistics, we are paid higher than our same-age peers in other industries.
All of these factors tell us that the average development team are not representative of the average user.
If the average development team are not representative of the average person… they are likely to make assumptions about their systems users. When I hear “quality is a whole team responsibility”, that could mean calling out assumptions and ensuring products are fit for use by their intended users, because that might not be us.
