Audience

The people the work is for, described precisely enough to picture one of them. Design for everyone and you move no one.

An audience is not a demographic band; it is a situation. People enter it when a need arrives and leave when it is met. Describing the situation precisely, what they were doing, what broke, what they fear getting wrong, beats any table of ages and incomes.

The working test is whether the team can picture one specific person and argue about what she would do. If the audience is everyone who values quality, no argument is possible and the work drifts toward the average. Naming who it is for is also naming who it is not for, which takes nerve.