Map reader situations without guessing who people are

Choose the problem as the unit

For a creator reporting library, “junior marketer” is too broad to determine the right explanation. A first-time reader interpreting impressions, a colleague preparing an accessible public export and an owner deciding whether a report supports a commercial claim face different tasks. Define the trigger, desired outcome, prior knowledge and obstacle for each situation. Do not attach invented ages, employers or income bands.

GOV.UK’s user-needs guidance distinguishes researched needs from assumptions and describes circumstances alongside the task and purpose. It concerns government services, not a validated segmentation of LinkedIn creators. Here the situation map is an original planning artifact; no real research participants or audience cluster analysis produced its rows.

Give every row an evidence state

Use separate columns for task statement, source reference, what was actually observed or reported, and remaining hypothesis. A genuine support question can support the existence of that question in that context; it does not establish its share of the audience. A secondhand summary should remain reported evidence until its source and scope can be checked. An editor suggestion belongs in the hypothesis column.

A public analytics panel may describe an aggregate audience within its own threshold and time window. It cannot join a specific person’s job title to their obstacle or willingness to pay. Keep aggregate fit review in its own guide. Minimize identifying detail in the planning map; a local source reference is usually enough to revisit legitimate evidence.

Work through a three-situation map

All three rows in this exercise are hypotheses. S1: “I have a screenshot and need to identify its period before comparing it”; obstacle: cropped dates; proposed help: period inspection. S2: “I must share a report but cannot expose identities”; obstacle: private labels; proposed help: redaction and export review. S3: “I must explain whether the report shows sales”; obstacle: no payment evidence; proposed help: outcome limits. No row establishes that any real person has the problem.

The map allows overlap: someone may have S1 and S2 today and S3 later. Choose a guide because it completes a task, not because a fictional segment deserves a quota. Link existing guides where they already answer the need. Record a missing fact that would materially change the answer, such as whether dates remain in the saved export, instead of requesting an entire personal history.

Resolve three segmentation traps

S-A — Constructed title shortcut: a panel reports many managers. Decision: do not label them budget owners or assume they all need a sales proposal. Keep the task evidence unknown. Outcome: an unsupported buyer segment is removed from the map.

S-B — Constructed forced exclusivity: a person could need both period interpretation and private-label removal. Decision: keep S1/S2 as overlapping situations and link the relevant preparation sequence. Outcome: no duplicate person count or invented single permanent persona.

S-C — Constructed priority conflict: a proposed visual makeover is easy, but the same report has an unsupported sales claim. Decision: hold that claim and prioritize its evidence problem; a nicer graphic does not resolve it. Outcome: a bounded editorial priority, not observed reader preference.

Select a bounded next response

Choose with a visible reason: task importance in supported context, consequence of a wrong answer, existing coverage, evidence readiness and actual maintenance capacity. Do not multiply arbitrary segment size by guessed conversion to produce a convincing score. An unmeasured high-risk need may require clarification or a hold rather than a confident article.

For each proposed response, write what a reader should be able to do and what would show that the response failed. A technically working link is different from successful task completion. If later legitimate research changes the circumstances, version the map and review the dependent guides; do not quietly relabel old assumptions as validated needs.

Keep evidence and editorial choice traceable

The private record contains situation ID, trigger/task/goal, constraint, actual evidence and date, hypothesis, overlap, proposed guide, priority reason, owner and next check. The download includes the original three-row map and cases. Its checker ensures all three supplied rows remain explicitly hypothetical; it cannot validate needs, representativeness, identity, reader preference or purchases.

Primary guidance was read on 1 November 2026. No segmentation study, interviews, recruitment or personal-data enrichment was performed. The worksheet helps decide what to investigate and explain next. Keep any future real evidence in its actual scope and avoid copying private source material into public examples.

1. Record the task, scope and actual authority.
2. Inspect inputs and evidence state at the actual source.
3. Work through the full proposal with dependencies and unknowns.
4. Record the decision, owner and next permitted step.
5. Verify actual results separately from plans and constructed examples.