Indi Young Tells Kate About Mental Models & Her New Book
Kate Rutter recently spoke with Indi Young, an Adaptive Path founder and the author of the new book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with User Behavior (use discount code “402084” for 10% off of the cover price). Below is a quick excerpt, or you can read the full interview.
Be sure to join Indi for her virtual seminar, Mental Models: Getting Into Your Customer’s Head, on February 20. Sign up with promotion code “RMYOUNG1” and receive a copy of Indi’s new book all for the discounted price of $129 — a savings of $30 off the regular price. If you can’t make the virtual seminar, you can meet Indi at IxDA-SF’s Mental Models: Sparking Creativity Through Empathy, a free event at CNET on February 28.
KR: I can understand what a mental model looks like and a bit about how you get at it. Let’s talk about what would a company use these for? Why are mental models important?
IY: The power of a mental model diagram is manifold. One of the more powerful things that you can do is use it as a ten-year plan to understand where you are with your business and where you’re going — where it makes sense to head next. Usually, businesses are pretty focused on what they want to get done in the near term, but not awfully focused on the far term. Mental models are a look at long-term, mapping out the different areas. Let’s say there’s a hole under one of these towers and you want to support that area or maybe one of the towers is weakly supported and you want to be able to provide better support, then the diagram serves as a roadmap to look at where these gaps exist. You then circle those and say, “Okay, we’re going to figure this out in 2009 and we’re going to figure that in 2010.”
There’s another powerful aspect of this: A lot of people in organizations these days really believe that the customer should come first. That’s a mantra, but they have a hard time getting into the customer’s head. So you ask them a question, “How is this going to help the customer?” They begin by responding in terms of what they as employees are going to be doing. But, it isn’t an exact match yet. The power of the upper half of the diagram is in the words that we use to describe the different towers and the different boxes in the towers. All those words begin with verbs. I believe that verbs enhance a reader’s — a designer’s or a business manager’s — understanding of what is going on in that person’s head. It’s really a great way to get inside somebody’s head.
Structure is another thing that you can use an alignment diagram for. The mental spaces, those clusters of towers I was talking about, map in a real way the structure; how you want to support the user. For example, if we were talking about a diabetes website, you might have sections in that application or product that correspond to the mental spaces of how a user takes care of their disease.
Read the rest of Kate’s interview of Indi Young.
Get to Know Chip Conley: MX San Francisco Keynote Speaker
We’re pleased to announce that Chip Conley, founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, will be keynoting the first day at MX San Francisco.
Joie de Vivre operates dozens of wonderful boutique hotels across California, where their long-time focus on great guest experiences has lead to impressive growth and great financial results. Chip says, “The best way to describe our hotels is that we offer an experience.” What inspires us about Chip is his ability to put experiences and business into the same context, leading Joie de Vivre through tough decisions to emerge as an incredible place to work and to stay.
Check out Chip’s blog, including his post on emotion connection in the hotel experience and how it stretches to the web experience.
You can still get in on early bird registration for MX San Francisco, April 20-22. Use discount code “NEWS” for an additional 15% off of the early bird registration price.
We’re Looking for a Marketing Manager
Adaptive Path is the people who work here. We’ve created a work environment that respects the individual — their needs, dreams and pipe dreams. We promote a live/work balance including five weeks of vacation per year.
We’re looking for a Marketing Manager who can help us build on our thought leadership position and continue to develop our brand. A successful Marketing Manager will thrive in a highly decentralized, dynamic and collaborative creative environment.
Interested? Check out the complete description.
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