People CAN change…
Back in a past life, I worked on the marketing team for a tech start-up the built a marketing platform. The behavioral insights from the platform go beyond basic segmentation insights. On the marketing team, we framed the value proposition of the platform as understanding the human; going beyond demographics to uncover the people’s behavior.
I remember talking to the Marketing head who shared that the reason she left her organization to join this startup was that what they were doing was “changing the game”. I expressed saying I really do not understand why this platform is “changing the game”. She said to me that I was in my early 20s in an era where Big Data is ubiquitous. But from having to practice marketing in the 90s and early 2000s, basic demographics were the best bet.
As I entered the world of design, I have a similar feeling about mental models particularly in comparison to personas. My assumptions as I built personas have been that yes they are false but they are fluid and what we call mental models are part of what we expect of personas. My “duh” moments may seem brutish and naive. But, my reaction is with the pattern of conversations that knockdown one an existing framework to replace with a new as one to lead us to a brighter future. This is so in relation to personas and mental models, ie forget personas, use mental models.
Let’s work through this:
So if I define a basic persona as the following:
Thoughtful Tom
Age: 28
Marital status: Single
Motivations: Price, comfort, rewards, loyalty
Interests: Sports, Music, Politics
Habits: Values-driven, Regular Exercise, Family oriented
My assumptions are that his habits are reflective of where he is in his life but what drives his behavior is within the ecosystem he operates in.
What time of the year is it for Tom or people like Tom? Did a major life event happen in his life? Was that event positive/ negative?
These further questions will influence Tom’s frame of thinking. These are what we typically will go into designing mental models for Tom, of which, we can develop multiple.
The underlying assumption of the mental model framework is that people can change.
The banter on the question of if people change is well documented. In my work as a design researcher, I am led to believe people can be adaptable. The emphasis is on “can”.
That being said personas are relevant to understand how to think about where people find themselves and how it defines them. Mental models allow us to think through how people may deviate or operate in line with their defined characteristics.
Are both of these not relevant? As a proponent of mixed methods both have value. Mental models as the new shining star has a lot to teach us especially in a world that feels increasingly small and rapidly evolving. But other models like personas still matter.
