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Learn how a user role defines the user's experience and controls what the user is able to see and do within a product.
New terms:
- User role: A name for a set of permissions that control what the user is able to see and do within a product.
- B2B: An abbreviation for "business-to-business". A B2B product serves businesses. For example, here are a few B2B companies: WeWork, Mailchimp, and Salesforce.
- B2C: An abbreviation for "business-to-consumer". A B2C product serves individual consumers. For example, these companies are mostly B2C: Chipotle, Target, and Instagram. It gets murky since they do serve businesses in some ways, but they're largely B2C.
- Note: Many companies are a hybrid of b2b and b2c. For instance, Apple sells computers to individuals and they also sell to businesses.
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[MUSIC]
0:00
Hi, I'm Hope.
0:09
I'm a Product Designer at Treehouse.
0:10
In this workshop, we'll delve into
the nuances of building a product for
0:12
different audiences.
0:16
In the previous course,
you may have learned about personas.
0:18
A persona represents a common user and
a product's target audience.
0:22
It contains demographics,
behaviors, motivations, and so on.
0:27
But a product can have
more than one persona and
0:32
personas can greatly
differ from one another.
0:35
A consumer-facing company,
0:39
like Nike, has casual shoppers
who buy basic running sneakers.
0:40
But they also have hardcore sneaker
fans who like to customize their shoes.
0:46
Those are separate personas, but
0:53
there aren't explicit user
roles shown to the visitor.
0:54
The Nike website is a shared experience
where each persona can find their own way.
0:58
On the other hand, business-to-business
products commonly called B2B products,
1:04
often do distill the goals
of personas into user roles
1:10
in order to create divergent paths.
1:14
A user role defines
the user's experience and
1:17
it controls what the user is able
to see and do within the product.
1:20
Let's look at Google Docs.
1:25
When you share a document with a person,
you can adjust their permission settings.
1:27
I can give someone full reign over my
document by allowing them to edit or
1:31
I can allow them to comment, which lets
them post comments and suggestions.
1:36
The most restrictive permission
setting is view only,
1:41
which allows them to see the document but
not interact with it.
1:44
Google Docs service businesses in
addition to individual customers.
1:48
So you can see here that I also have
the ability to make this discoverable to
1:53
the entire Treehouse organization.
1:57
That's much easier than me having
to invite everyone one by one.
2:00
See how Google designed this app for
several user roles?
2:05
Let's look at another app, Slack.
2:10
Slack is a messaging app that's
commonly used by businesses.
2:13
Here's a workspace where I'm an admin.
2:17
As an admin, I have special privileges
to change the workspace settings,
2:20
manage members, create user groups,
manage apps and control the billing.
2:25
Let's invite a new user.
2:31
Great, now a login to that user to
see how the experience differs for
2:42
a regular, non-admin user.
2:46
The app looks the same from this view,
but let's dig into the menu.
2:50
There's no longer an
administration option.
2:54
Let's try to invite someone else.
2:59
Now, I successfully was able
to invite a new member but
3:08
notice how I don't have visibility
into the members' settings beyond that.
3:10
Let's pop back into the admin experience.
3:16
As an admin, I can view invitations and
can even revoke a pending invitation.
3:19
From the Manage members tab, I can change
their role to owner, admin, or guest.
3:26
I can also deactivate their account.
3:32
So as you can see, there is the main
user experience that they both share.
3:35
But, there are variations and what they
see and what action they can take.
3:40
In the next video,
3:45
let's take a look at the benefits of
including user roles in a product.
3:46
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