Thinking Styles are the archetypes that you would base characters on, like characters in TV episodes. (Try writing your scenarios like TV episodes, with constant characters.) Characters think, react, and made decisions based on their thinking style archetype. BUT they also switch thinking styles depending on context. For example, if you take a flight as a single traveler versus bringing a young child along–you’ll probably change your thinking style for that flight, including getting to the gate, boarding, and deplaning.

100+ open source innovation tools from the greatest design & strategy agencies in the world. ​ Ideal for both offline or online workshops. All tools are pixel perfectly packaged in a vectorized PDF or PNG and can be downloaded for free.

I sometimes make a further suggestion to client teams who have years of experience working directly (via research) with the diversity of the people their organization supports. I suggest they abandon “persona” (a representation of a person) and replace it with “behavioral audience segment” (a representation of a group). (Note: I have begun calling these “thinking styles” to emphasize that a person can change to a different group based on context or experience.)This change allows those qualified teams to get away from names and photos. I don’t suggest this for everyone. Note: “Behavioral audience segment” is the name I use, although there may be a better one. In its defense, Susan Weinschenk uses “behavioral science” to mean what I am trying to represent. And “audience segment” is a common way to express a group an organization is focused on.

But she did explain how researching and designing for the majority or “average user” actually end up ignoring, othering, and harming the people our designs are meant to serve. Indi shared how she finds patterns in people’s behaviors, thoughts, and needs—and how she uses that data to create thinking styles that inform more inclusive design decisions. Indi talked about… Why researchers should look for patterns, not anecdotes, to understand real user needs. What are thinking styles and how to uncover and use them. Why your “average” user often doesn’t exist in the real world, and how we can do better.

Ikea researchers explore Kiwi homes before opening first NZ store Christine Gough, head of interior design at Ikea Australia, is one of 40 Ikea researchers visiting hundreds of Kiwi homes to gauge what products to stock in its Auckland mega store.

If you have ever been tasked with influencing a behaviour, you will know that it is critical to understand that behaviour in context. You need to understand the issues faced by the people affected. At BIT, we refer to the process of understanding behaviour in context as Exploring. Exploring is about discovering what people do and crucially why.

The JTBD Canvas 2.0 is a tool to help you scope out your JTBD landscape prior to conducting field research. It frames your field of inquiry and scopes of your innovation effort.

The Wheel of Progress® is a framework created by Eckhart Boehme and Peter Rochel leveraging jobs-to-be-done principles and methods to evaluate why customers “hire“ a given product or service to accomplish a Customer Job. It provides a canvas to be used when conducting consumer research to evaluate the journey a customer takes from first thought to use of the solution (consumption/job satisfaction). In addition, it enables one to evaluate the four forces of progress at play (push, pull, habits, anxieties) in regards to 'switching behavior'. Finally, one is able to evaluate constraints (internal, external, time-based) that impact the customer journey.

This Universal Design Playbook was created with the purpose of providing easy access to planning and facilitating universal design development work, whether it is short workshops or longer work sessions. That comes entirely down to what the user selects using the sorting functions on the page. The Playbook contains a collection of methods that can be used in any design process. Each method contains useful information so the user can be certain that they are selecting the most appropriate method to fulfil their purpose. The methods also include tips for how to accommodate participants with diverse abilities to ensure that everyone feels included in a workshop setting no matter what they are capable of.

Info, research, questionnaires/scales, info on application to specific topics

This is a map of subcultures within an organization (it's called a fitness landscape). It's built from stories told by the people in the organization. What can you do with it? Understand where the culture(s) are and request changes by saying I want “More stories like these...“ and “Fewer like those...“ Dave Snowden and The Cynefin Company (formerly Cognitive Edge) are offering impactful ways to visualize culture, and communicate direction in a manner that is customized to where each subculture is now and where their next best step is. Watch this video until 48:48 for more on the science and method (Link at 44:33) https://lnkd.in/emuAzp6E Stories collected using The Cynefin Co's Sensemaker tool.

A five-step framework In summary, the five steps that we will walk you through are: Ask rich questions, not dumb questions Write a codebook Code your data Map your data Form your personas

MATE tool

An open source collection of Design Principles and methods.

To get the brain to accept a story which explains why a consumer bought a product, it needs information presented in a particular way. The best way to deliver this information is to explain a customer’s anxieties, motivations, purchase-progress events, and purchase-progress situations. When combined, they form what I call Characters.

Sir Humphrey, incensed that Hacker is pushing ahead with his “Grand Design”, delivers a masterclass in how to conduct a government opinion poll.

Empathy maps, customer journey maps, experience maps, and service blueprints depict different processes and have different goals, yet they all build common ground within an organization.

A cognitive walkthrough is a technique used to evaluate the learnability of a system. Unlike user testing, it does not involve users (and, thus, it can be relatively cheap to implement). Like heuristic evaluations, expert reviews, and PURE evaluations, it relies on the expertise of a set of reviewers to assess the interface. Although cognitive walkthroughs can be conducted by an individual, they are designed to be done as part of a group in a workshop setting where evaluators walk through a task in a highly structured manner from a new user’s point of view.

Whilst you’re shaping the problem space and then during the first diamond of understanding and defining which user needs to focus on, you should ideally get out of the lab or the office. When you have defined your solution and are iterating on it, that’s the best time to use your go to method — lab usability testing in a lot of cases, remote interviewing is mine. This is because you are likely needing cycles of quick feedback and iteration so you need a tried and trusted method so you can spin up a sprint of research quickly and efficiently. So how about when time and efficiency isn’t quite so important and the quality and depth of understanding or engagement of stakeholders are the key drivers? Here are some examples from my toolkit:

Method:Three participatory workshops were held with the independent Welsh residential decarbonisation advisory group(‘the Advisory Group’)to (1)maprelationships betweenactors, behavioursand influences onbehaviourwithin thehome retrofitsystem,(2)provide training in the Behaviour Change Wheel framework(3)use these to developpolicy recommendationsfor interventions. Recommendations were analysed usingthe COM-B (capability, opportunity, motivation) model of behaviourtoassesswhether they addressed these factors. Results:Twobehavioural systems mapswere produced,representing privately rented and owner-occupied housing tenures. The main causal pathways and feedback loops in each map are described.

How many interviews are enough depends on when you reach saturation, which, in turn, depends on your research goals and the people you’re studying. To avoid doing more interviews than you need, start small and analyze as you go, so you can stop once you’re no longer learning anything new.

In their maturity, the fields of experience strategy and behavior change design are moving past the casual flirtations of two complementary knowledge domains into a full fledged partnership: when we marry the design of behavioral interventions and the design of experiences, there’s a special power in combining the myriad frameworks from both domains. This becomes especially effective when the goal is not just to identify pain points in an existing experience journey or illustrate an ideal future one — but to make actionable recommendations that will help clients make the leap from actual to ideal.

40 participants is an appropriate number for most quantitative studies, but there are cases where you can recruit fewer users.

excellent collection of how-to content

The most common tool, methods, processes, and deliverables that designers use throughout the digital product design process.