Just wrapped up a workshop on Mental Models with Indi Young. Here’s a excerpt from the program:
“Those in the field of cognitive research have been describing and defining mental models for several decades. Mental models are the most effective way to align design strategy with your users’ behavior, and to approach your design from the understanding of the end user. Mental models are representations of people’s behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use.”
After going through the workshop, I can’t say I’m a mental models expert, but I can say it made me think differently as far as evaluating users’ behavior. As great as I think Indi was during this workshop, she had to cut out a lot of information due to the time constraints. We had 3 different group exercises, the first being a non-directed interview. We took turns interviewing each other, but it wasn’t scripted, more conversational. Indi gave us a topic we had to try to retrieve information about, but it had to happen naturally through conversation. As an interviewer, you become a pure listener, soaking up information from the person you’re interviewing, then immediately using that information to get more. What you want to do is collect reasoning and experiences because those things have meaning and value. Here’s an example. Let’s say your doing research on fishing. I’ve shorten the below dialogue, as it would be a much longer conversation if it was transcribed.
Q: Jane, want do you do for a living?
A: I’m a design engineer, I work for….yak….yak…yak
Q: That sounds like a great profession. What do you do outside of work?
A: I like hanging out with friends and family, traveling, camping…yak…yak…yak
Q: Sounds like you enjoy the outdoors, what do you like about it the most?
A: I just like getting away, especially when I need peace and quiet…yak…yak…yak
Q: Do you like getting on the water?
A: Yes, I do. I like to just chill out, maybe do some tubing…yak…yak…yak
Q: Do you like to fish?
A: No, i did it when I was a kid, but never got into it…yak…yak…yak
Q: Why don’t you fish anymore?
A: I’m just not that patient…yak…yak…yak
OK, so this might not be an “Indi approved” line of questioning, but it’s useful because you find out about what a person’s behavior through their experiences and reasoning, without flat out asking them what do they think about fishing, how many times do they fish a year, if the could, would they, etc., etc.. Sometimes in our discovery phase of our projects, we rely heavily on percentages, analytics from a web site, use cases, which all work, but this could be something that could replace or supplement elements in the discovery phase. The results will help us better define our audience and deliver better experiences. The results won’t be great though, if you don’t have a good interviewer, that can think on the fly, process information fast, and ask the great “Why” questions. Toss out the scripted questions, the results must happen naturally.
After collecting information from multiple interviews, you would start to organize the responses. Then you take those responses, organize them into groups or “towers”. General, high level responses get thrown out like, “I’m a design engineer”. Look for emotions or surprises like “…when I need peace and quiet” or “I’m just not that patient…”. That starts to build the top part of you mental model. The bottom part is how we can support each of those towers of responses. Support could include a product, like, developing a fishing pole that’s easier to use, or a service, like a “fishing for dummies” website or blog. When I get back to Lincoln, I’ll spread the knowledge, and maybe run through some of the similar exercises I went through today. Check out the book on Flickr, and I’ve also bought one for us to share.
Book: Mental Models
Author: Indi Young
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