Movie-Goer Mental Model
You may wonder, "What does a mental model look like?" Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is an example... the Movie-Goer Mental Model (100Kb PDF).
This first example is from some research I did while writing Task-Based Audience Segmentation in Six Steps at Adaptive Path. It is a Movie Goer mental model aligned with tools from a fictitious movie distribution company. And, since the diagram itself is the powerful component of this approach, I will feature a few examples here, before the book is published.
Movie-Goer Mental Model(100Kb PDF)
Introducing JMS Entertainment
JMS Entertainment is a fictitious movie distribution company. The leaders at JMS wish to create a web-based marketing vehicle for the United States that will increase distribution. They plan for the site to advertise new movies that the company distributes. To attract people to their site, they are thinking of offering users several free features.
JMS conducted a study of what movie-goers do related to finding, attending, enjoying, and sharing movies. They then mapped their proposed web-based tools to this model. The resulting alignment diagram will help them determine whether the features they are thinking of offering match up to the user mental model. From this diagram the will be able to validate their business plan and decide where it would be best to invest their energies.
Synchronicity: Look What Just Showed Up!
Check it out. http://www.showtimemaps.com/ Launched by Pete Coulter on 19-Jun-06.
Comments
Having just finished a large project that included the mental model process, I have to say, a completed, printed Mental Model is a beautiful and impressive artifact to deliver to the client.
Posted by: todd | July 6, 2006 2:43 PM
Hi, congratulations for the model, I found it terrific¡¡¡
Gloria Alcayaga
Information Architect
Santiago-Chile
Posted by: Gloria Alcayaga | November 16, 2006 10:01 AM
Thanks, Gloria. I hear there was a recent Information Architecture conference in Santa Cruz, Chile. Did you attend?
--indi
Posted by: Indi Young | November 16, 2006 11:15 AM
Hi Indi
yes, I attended to the conference in Santa Cruz and I had the pleasure to meet Peter.
Thank you
pd:Finally I found the legend
Posted by: Gloria Alcayaga | November 16, 2006 12:26 PM
Hi there,
I'm struggling to see where the extra benefits for going through what can be an expensive exercise (6 weeks to do it right you say) over using your persona segmentations. While you probably wouldn't map segments to functionality directly like this alignment map, I think you still get similar insights.
Can you explain how the output of the two differ? What is my real bang for the buck here in going through this and coming up with this diagram?
Also, would you say this is more geared toward web applications and less toward marketing sites? (I would think so). Even if that marketing site goal is to generate leads to sell a particular product...
Thanks!
Tom
Posted by: Tom | June 26, 2007 6:52 AM
Tom, thanks for the question. As you pointed out already, the biggest advantage of the diagram is being able to align solutions to the various towers and get a picture of how your business strategy is actually supporting the people you serve. This picture acts as a roadmap over long periods of time and across diverse teams. As your team members shift over the next ten years, the diagram can serve as a guide. (This is true of personas, as well. I recommend developing personas as the next step after generating a mental model.) It doesn't have to take six weeks to create a mental model, and I list a lot of shortcuts in my book. But like personas, this kind of research benefits from more time spent with real people understanding how they think in real-world environments, not just in front of the tool you are building. The longer you spend gathering and analyzing data, the deeper you will understand these folks. It's true for any kind of conceptual research. Shortcuts can produce a diagram faster and cheaper, but you may miss some important observations.
The mental model diagram can be used to guide strategic decisions for any kind of thing you build for people to use. It has been used to guide web applications, yes, as well as platform-specific applications and marketing web sites. It has also been used to chart workflow and redesign the way teams work together, such as project management and catalog production workflow.
Hope this helps!
Posted by: Indi Young | June 26, 2007 10:54 AM