Design for How People Think

Part III Putting the Six Minds to Work in Your Designs

[ Part III ]

Putting the Six Minds to Work in Your Designs

When I was studying for my PhD, I had a very distinguished professor who, two and a half hours into a three-hour seminar would say, “So what?! So…what?!” This evoked terror in all the graduate students, but really his goal was to say—in a somewhat confrontational way—”Why should I care? How can I use this?”

Part III is all about the “So what?” of the Six Minds. What do we do with the data once we’ve collected it? What do you get out of it? How can you go from a piece of evidence to insight? And how should these insights influence your product and service designs? How can we use this knowledge to benefit and influence your customers?

Put simply, how can all this knowledge about, and understanding of, end users enable product and service designers to design better products and services?

In the following chapters, we’ll look at how we can apply our data on the Six Minds, determine if our current interface is working, and design differently to match our audience’s ideal experience. We’ll also look at real-life examples of where cognitive design has influenced digital design.

Last, we’ll look at how you fit all of this into your everyday process. I’ve been in the trenches with developers, so trust me. I’ve got ammunition for those of you who think your bosses or developers won’t go for this approach.