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# Who Will Actually Use Quantum Computers? Study Identifies 11 User Types

**[The Quantum Insider](https://daily.dev/sources/thequantuminsider)** · 10 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A study from researchers at institutions including Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Argonne National Laboratory, TU Munich and Delft identifies 11 distinct personas of quantum software users, ranging from business executives and government contractors to physicists, algorithm designers, HPC engineers, and embedded developers. The personas differ sharply in how much abstraction they want: business users prefer high-level interfaces that hide hardware details, while algorithm designers and hardware-facing developers need deep access to low-level system information. The exploratory research, based on a Dagstuhl seminar focus group and nine practitioner interviews at IEEE QCE 2025, argues the quantum industry needs varied software interfaces rather than a one-size-fits-all approach as hardware matures. The paper, posted on arXiv and slated for MODELS Companion 2026, is presented as a starting persona hypothesis rather than a definitive classification.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://thequantuminsider.com/2026/08/21/who-will-actually-use-quantum-computers-study-identifies-11-user-types>

## Questions this post answers

### What are the 11 user personas identified for quantum computing software in this persona study?

The personas include business users, early adopters, government contractors, physicists, chemists, researchers, simulation engineers, platform builders, quantum algorithm designers, HPC engineers, and embedded quantum developers. Business users and early adopters favor high-level, results-focused interfaces, while algorithm designers, HPC engineers, and embedded developers need deep access to hardware and system details. Government contractors need traceability and cannot rely on black-box implementations.

_Developers weighing how much hardware detail to expose in a quantum tool can track this framework's evolution on daily.dev._

### How was the quantum software persona study conducted and what are its limitations?

Researchers combined a focus group of roughly eight to ten quantum software experts at a 2024 Dagstuhl seminar with nine semi-structured interviews (15-40 minutes each) conducted at the 2025 IEEE Quantum Computing and Engineering conference. Limitations include a non-representative, convenience-sampled participant pool drawn from the existing quantum community, unrecorded interviews relying on manual notes, and only nine completed interviews, leading the authors to call it a 'persona hypothesis' rather than a definitive classification.

_Teams evaluating early-stage UX research methods in emerging fields like quantum computing can follow such studies on daily.dev._

### Why can't quantum computing frameworks like Qiskit and Cirq fully hide hardware details from developers yet?

Qiskit and Cirq let programmers build quantum programs without handling every hardware operation directly, but knowledge of the underlying machine still matters for getting the best performance from current quantum systems. Quantum computing has not reached the level of abstraction seen in classical computing, where a spreadsheet user need not understand transistors or a cloud developer need not know server locations.

_Developers picking between quantum SDKs based on abstraction level can stay current via daily.dev._

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---

Tags: [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#quantum-computing](https://daily.dev/tags/quantum-computing), [#qiskit](https://daily.dev/tags/qiskit)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/who-will-actually-use-quantum-computers-study-identifies-11-user-types-v2eie8vyj)

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