No. 39 “It has no point of view.”

it’s for everyone, so it’s for no one.

A design with a point of view picks who it’s for & what it believes. Then it says so.

Try to please everyone & you get beige: safe, polite & forgettable.

Finish this line: “It’s for ___, not for ___.”

In stories, point of view is whose eyes you see through. Say a work has one & you mean it takes a side.

In The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (1999), Alan Cooper argued that aiming at everyone misses everyone. Design for one person instead. That gave us personas.

Stanford’s d.school made it a step: write a POV statement before you design.

• Alan Cooper, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum (1999)
• Stanford d.school, “Point of View” method (Bootcamp Bootleg)

Save this for the next brief that says “target audience: everyone.”