Universal Thinking Styles

People share patterns of thought across age, race and gender and not generally specific to a demographic attribute.

You still using personas? Those cardboard people with physical attributes and observed conditions that is supposed to represent real people?

Lets do an exercise. You are the persona. Talk to five people that you believe are represented by this persona (some of your friends who share these attributes). Ask them about their approach to money. What is important to them? How they feel about money and how do they reason about money?

If you are lucky, you might find one person similar to you (but not based on job, gender or age). What you will find most likely, are five people with vastly different ways of thinking about money.

For some, money might be everything (achieve at all cost), for others it is just a "means to an end". There might also be a friend that doesn't believe they deserve a lot of money or can't keep money.

What you are noticing is what Indi Young calls "Thinking Styles". We have different thinking styles in relation to making choices in context of a specific purpose. People also don't just have one thinking style. For every context you might find yourself in, you might use a different thinking style.

The good news is that people across gender, age or race can employ the same thinking style in a shared context. You no longer need to design according to some "fake" group of people, but on real data that is captured around people's inner thinking, emotional reaction and purpose.