Design for How People Think

Part II Exposing Secrets

[ Part II ]

Exposing Secrets

If you’ve made it this far, chances are you’ve learned a lot about the six types of mental processes I’d like you to focus on. As a reminder, here are the things you should think about with regard to your target customers:

Vision/Attention

What is attracting your customers’ attention? What are the words, images, and objects they are looking for?

Wayfinding

How are customers representing where they are (whether in the physical world, an app, or virtual space)? How do they believe they can interact with and navigate in this space?

Memory

What are the past experiences customers are using to frame and understand what they are experiencing? What are mental models/stereotypes that are forming their expectations about how things should work and what happens next?

Language

What are the words your customers are using? What do those words, and their associated meanings according to the customers, say about their level of expertise (thereby suggesting how they might want to be engaged by you)?

Decision Making

What is the problem your customers think they need to solve? How does that differ from the actual problem? How do they think they can get to the solution? What subproblems do they need solve and what decisions do they need to make along the way?

Emotion

What are your customers’ deep-seated goals, desires, and fears? How are those affecting their decisions, and what they are looking to achieve? How might that affect what will ...