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Design Target Factors

Design Target Factors evaluate each persona across 6 influence and connectivity factors using the same 7-dimension rating model as the Discernment Matrix. Together, these factors define the persona's "Super Connector" profile -- its capacity to amplify team output through influence, optimism, and collaborative reach.

Purpose

The Discernment Matrix captures how well a persona exercises judgment. Design Target Factors capture how effectively a persona connects, influences, and energizes the broader team. A persona with high Design Target Factor scores naturally amplifies the work of those around it, bridging gaps between categories and phases.

The Super Connector concept is particularly relevant for Champion personas, which must orchestrate teams of base personas and maintain high influence across multiple workflow phases.

The 6 Factors

1. Optimism

The persona's tendency to approach challenges as opportunities rather than obstacles. An optimistic persona maintains momentum during complex Find phases, encourages creative solutions during Create phases, and frames Critique feedback constructively.

High-scoring personas: User Guide Crafter (UG), Executive Communicator (EC), Collaboration Orchestrator (CO)

2. Social Connectivity

The persona's density of meaningful connections within the team. A highly connected persona maintains active relationships across multiple categories and phases, serving as a communication hub.

High-scoring personas: Collaboration Orchestrator (CO), Documentation Evangelist (DE), Blueprint Crafter (BC)

3. Influence

The persona's ability to shape decisions, priorities, and quality standards beyond its own outputs. Influence is not authority -- it is the capacity to be heard and to shift outcomes through the quality of input.

High-scoring personas: Documentation Evangelist (DE), Research Crafter Champion (RCHM), Blueprint Crafter Champion (BCHM)

4. Appreciation for Diversity

The persona's valuation of diverse perspectives, approaches, and skill sets. This factor measures how actively the persona seeks input from personas in different categories and how well it integrates heterogeneous viewpoints.

High-scoring personas: User Guide Crafter Champion (UGCH), Stakeholder Content Publisher (SCP), Anti-fact Mitigation Specialist (AMS)

5. Curiosity

The persona's drive to learn, explore, and understand domains outside its primary scope. While the Discernment Matrix also measures Curiosity as a trait, Design Target Factors measure it as a connectivity factor -- how curiosity drives cross-domain engagement.

High-scoring personas: Research Crafter (RC), Semantic Taxonomy Engineer (STE), Catalog Indexer Architect (CIA)

6. Leadership

The persona's ability to guide, coordinate, and inspire other personas toward shared goals. Leadership as a Design Target Factor measures the persona's capacity for emergent leadership -- stepping up when the workflow demands coordination.

High-scoring personas: All Champion personas (RCHM, BCHM, UGCH, RBCH), Collaboration Orchestrator (CO)

The Super Connector

A Super Connector is a persona (or human collaborator adopting a persona role) that scores in the top quartile across all 6 factors. Super Connectors are force multipliers in the FCC workflow:

  • They bridge communication gaps between categories.
  • They accelerate phase transitions by facilitating handoffs.
  • They improve output quality by bringing diverse perspectives to critique.
  • They maintain team morale and momentum through optimism and influence.

In the FCC framework, Champion personas are designed to be Super Connectors. Their orchestrates relationships give them structural connectivity, and their elevated role titles give them positional leadership. The Design Target Factor ratings validate whether a Champion is fulfilling this Super Connector potential.

Identifying Super Connectors

To identify Super Connectors across the 24-persona team:

  1. Compute the ranked_percentile_rating for each factor across all personas.
  2. A persona qualifies as a Super Connector if its percentile is >= 0.75 for all 6 factors.
  3. Partial Super Connectors (>= 0.75 for 4-5 factors) can be targeted for development.

The 7 Rating Dimensions

Design Target Factors use the identical RatingDimensions model as the Discernment Matrix:

Dimension Field Description
Self Rating self_rating The persona's self-assessment of the factor
Peer Rating peer_rating Assessment from directly collaborating personas
Survey Rating survey_rating Aggregated stakeholder/user assessment
Individual Weighted Rating individual_weighted_rating Weighted composite of self, peer, and survey
Organizational Rating org_rating Assessment from organizational context
External Rating external_rating Assessment from outside the immediate workflow
Ranked Percentile Rating ranked_percentile_rating Percentile rank across all 24 personas

All ratings use a 0.0 to 1.0 scale.

Data Model

Design Target Factors are implemented in src/fcc/personas/models.py:

@dataclass(frozen=True)
class DesignTargetFactor:
    name: str
    description: str
    ratings: RatingDimensions

Each PersonaSpec contains a design_target_factors field holding a list of up to 6 DesignTargetFactor instances. The RatingDimensions class is shared with the Discernment Matrix.

Example

A Collaboration Orchestrator (CO) Design Target Factor entry for Social Connectivity:

design_target_factors:
  - name: Social Connectivity
    description: >-
      Dense network of active relationships across all categories and phases.
      Serves as the primary communication hub for the team.
    ratings:
      self_rating: 0.95
      peer_rating: 0.93
      survey_rating: 0.91
      individual_weighted_rating: 0.92
      org_rating: 0.90
      external_rating: 0.88
      ranked_percentile_rating: 0.96