User Roles
A user role is a particular kind of relationship between some users and a system. Roles are played by users — they are not the users themselves.
What is a user role?
In User-Centered Design, a user role describes a set of responsibilities, expectations, and behaviors that a person adopts when interacting with a system. The same individual may play different roles depending on context — for example, someone might act as an administrator in one session and as a regular viewer in another.
Why define user roles?
Identifying user roles early helps teams:
- Clarify who will use the system and under what circumstances.
- Prioritize features based on the needs of each role.
- Create more accurate personas and use cases downstream.
- Align stakeholders around a shared understanding of the user landscape.
Using user roles in UCDmanager
UCDmanager lets you define and manage user roles as part of a project. Each role can be linked to personas, abstract essential use cases, and heuristic evaluations, making it easy to trace design decisions back to the people they serve. Because roles are reusable across techniques, you can maintain consistency as your project evolves through multiple iterations.