101 Innovation Hacks

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Who's Your Mary?
101innovationhacks.substack.com

Who's Your Mary?

Adam Egger
May 9
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Share this post
Who's Your Mary?
101innovationhacks.substack.com
Sad Mary sketched by Franzi

This is Mary. She’s the person who always helps me to teach the concept of personas. I think the term persona is too technical.
I want everybody to understand that the product we produce doesn’t really matter. What matters are the following questions:

Who’s your Mary? Who’s the frustrated person that we want to focus on?
Why is Mary frustrated? How can we delight her?

These are the questions that I ask in every single design thinking workshop.

I don’t want them to develop a detailed persona description.
I want them to give me an example for their Mary.
I want them to feel Mary’s gaze all the time.
I want them to understand it’s all about Mary.

Innovation is solving pain and creating delight for someone.

Before you build a new product ask everyone around
“Who’s our Mary here? Whose life do we want to improve?”
Be surprised to see completely different answers here.


“It doesn’t matter how amazing your performance or products are, if you target the wrong audience, who don’t recognize, appreciate, or need your value, your effort will be both wasted and rejected.” - “Rejection Proof” by Jia Jiang


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Who's Your Mary?
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