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Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior
By Indi Young
Rosenfeld Media, LLC
705 Carroll Street, #2L
Brooklyn, New York
11215 USA
On the web: http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com
Please send errors to: [email protected]
Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld
Editor: Karen Whitehouse
Production Editor: Liz Danzico
Proofreader: Mary Jean Babic
Interior Design: Allison Cecil
Cover Design: Jason Kernevich
© 2008 Rosenfeld Media, LLC
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 1-933820-06-3
ISBN-13 9 781933 820064
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007930707
Printed and bound in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to my father, Evert Hale Young, Jr. His “can do” approach laid the perspective for my entire life.
How to Use this Book
Necessity is the mother of invention. Historically, tool design—from a sharpened stone ax to a folding Japanese pruning saw—has been inspired by need. The designers themselves range from seemingly isolated genius inventors to cubicle farms of engineers with explicit specification documents. Really successful design—that which solves the problem, is easy to use, and is beautiful to behold while functioning—is hit and miss. Innovation is elusive. Lots of money and hope are put towards products that look encouraging at the outset, but end up not quite reaching the mark. Entrepreneurs, investors, designers, engineers, and customers all get burned more often than they succeed.
There is no one method to follow to create perfect products. But there are many ways to increase the odds. One of them is to understand the reason for the tool in the first place. Deeply investigate what people are trying to get done and line up your solutions to match. Are you trying to solve a small part of a larger puzzle that could be simplified if you look at a broader context of the customer’s behavior and philosophies? Do you have so many aspects to your service that it’s hard to prioritize where to invest more development dollars?
As first a software engineer and then as a specialist in web applications, I had been doing this broad sort of task analysis for many years before I came up with a way to draw a picture of it all—a mental model, which is an affinity diagram of user behaviors surrounding a particular topic. (See “What is an Affinity Diagram?” in Chapter 1; and see Appendix B (
Who Should Read this Book?
Depending on your role, you might be interested in reading certain chapters first. I anticipate that a lot of you will be practitioners actually creating mental models. I also hope that many of you are responsible for product strategy—directors and executives—and are interested in how mental models can help guide your decisions. For those of you who are project managers and team managers within large organizations, I have included information about how to run a mental model project successfully as a part of a network of other research and design projects. And for all of you who need to persuade key people in your business to cultivate a better understanding of the people who use your products, I am listing key chapters to reference.
Product Strategists & Executives:
Chapter 1: What and Why? The Advantages of a Mental Model
Chapter 12: Alignment and Gap Analysis
Team Managers:
Chapter 2: When? Using Mental Models with Your Other Work
Chapter 3: Who? Mental Model Team Participants
Evangelists:
Chapter 1: What and Why? The Advantages of a Mental Model
Chapter 12: Alignment and Gap Analysis
Project Managers:
Appendix A: How Much Time and Money?Available on the book site at
Practitioners:
Chapter 4: Define Task-Based Audience Segments
Chapter 5: Specify Recruiting Details
Chapter 6: Set Scope for the Interviews
Chapter 7: Interview Participants
Chapter 8: Analyze the Transcripts
Chapter 9: Look for Patterns
Chapter 10: Create the Mental Model
Chapter 11: Adjust the Audience Segments
Chapter 12: Alignment and Gap Analysis
Chapter 13: Structure Derivation
I expect you’ll use this book as your resource when you create your first mental model. I also expect this book to be your resource when explaining the benefits of mental models to people in your organization, as you convince them that you really can turn the ship around and create user-centered solutions.
What’s in the Book?
This book answers some of the harder questions I am asked about how to create and use mental models. I begin with a set of chapters that introduce mental models and talk about why and when to make a mental model:
Chapter 1: What and Why? The Advantages of a Mental Model
Chapter 2: When? Using Mental Models with Your Other Work
Chapter 3: Who?