Table of Contents for

Designing for How People Think

Chapter 17. Putting the Six Minds to work: Appeal, Enhance, Awaken

At this point we’ve completed contextual interviews. We’ve extracted interesting data points from each participant and organized them according to the Six Minds. We’ve segmented the audience into different groupings. It’s time to put that data to work and think about how it should influence your products and services. 

In this chapter I’ll explain exactly what I mean by appealing to your audience, enhancing their experience, and awakening their passion. A summary might be:

• ● What would appeal to a user immediately so they buy into the product or service (even if the buying appeal doesn’t meet their true needs)? 
• ● What would keep a customer happy in the longer term, providing utility and a great long-term experience? 
• ● What will help users realize their deepest goals and desires?

We’ll look at the type of Six Minds data that we would use to do those things. And as usual, I’ll give you some examples of how to put all of this into practice.

Cool Hunting: What people say they want (Appeal)

Our first focus is all about appealing to your customers. A digital reference point for this section is the popular website Cool Hunting. If you’re not familiar with the site, it essentially curates articles and recommendations on everything from trendy hotels to yoga gear to the latest tech toys. What are the hot new trends that people are looking for, and saying that they want? 

You might think this is a bit superficial given our discussions of going beyond trends and getting at people’s underlying desires. But regardless of what you’re offering, it’s absolutely essential that you can attract your audience. They need to feel like your product or service is what they are looking for. 

Some of the time, what our audience wants and what might benefit them are two very different things. The task before us in that case isn’t easy. We have to be prepared to attract them and appeal to them using what they think they want — even if we know that something else might be much more beneficial for them. Ideally after attracting them we can educate them better in order to let the customers make an informed decision.

We have to start with where people are and what they’re saying they want and need, even if that’s not necessarily the case deep-down. Start with what they’re saying at face value. 

Going to our Six Minds data, I think there are three dimensions that are most relevant to this conversation around Appeal. 

1. 1. Vision/Attention: As you watch people interacting with digital products and services, what is it that they’re looking for visually? They might be looking for certain images, words, or charts. Maybe they’re scanning a specific section of a website, tool, or app and expecting for a particular feature. You want to ask yourself what are they looking for — and why?
2. 2. Language: Your user might be looking for specific words. In this case, take into account the actual words your audience is using to describe what they’re seeking. They may be looking for a “balance transfer,” even though what might be much more beneficial to them as an individual would be “credit counseling.” 
3. 3. Decision-Making: Also consider the problem they believe they are trying to solve, and what they view as the solution. As I’ve mentioned, it’s certainly possible that their ultimate problem has a different root cause than what they’re thinking of. Someone with a cough, for example, might assume cough medicine is the solution, when the ultimate problem actually might be related to allergies. Before we can offer users with what they really need, we have to first identify their perceived problem and solution. 

Lifehacker: What people need (Enhance)

Next we’ll look at how you go one step further to enhance your audience’s life. In keeping with the popular website theme, consider Lifehacker, a site that directs you to DIY tips and general life advice for the modern do-er. It’s a great example of presenting an audience with things that actually meet their needs and solve their problems. To enhance our users’ lives, we need to go a bit beyond what they’re saying to consider what would really solve a problem of theirs. 

Longer-term solution: Think of Uber. People were having a hard time getting taxis late in the evening. Maybe the taxi didn’t show up, or they experienced poor customer service, or what they really needed was an easy way to order a taxi in advance or arrange one for their mom. Through a new type of tool (enter Uber), you might be able to present users with a longer-term solution for their problem. 

Different way of representing something: This might look like creating a chart for a customer who needs to know some analytics but is confused by the clunky way they’re usually presented (think CSV data dump downloaded from a database, for example). Or presenting the data in such a way that makes decision-making easier. Maybe they’re used to recording the hours a staff member works on something, when what they really need is a Gantt chart showing which pieces have been accomplished, and when, and how that aligns with the original project timeline. 

New system: Your audience might need a novel type of reminder or alert system. Maybe they jot things down in a notepad, but they don’t refer to that throughout the day, so they end up forgetting to pick up groceries on the way home. They’re on their phone all the time, so what would be more effective is having those reminders or notes on a phone. 

Teaching a function: Perhaps your audience is searching and searching and searching for this one email that they know is in their inbox, but just can’t find. A solution might be teaching them a shortcut or command like typing in a colon and the sender’s email address to only pull up emails from that person. There might be ways to teach users a function that would work better for them or even save them hours of work. 

Novel tool: Maybe they’re trying to meet someone in person but their schedules just aren’t aligning. It might be better if you taught them how to use a video chat tool. 

These are all examples of things that could change people’s behavior, save them a significant amount of time, and address a very concrete problem in the reasonably near future. Now let’s look at how our Six Minds apply. 

1. 1. Decision-Making: You probably won’t be surprised to learn that we would focus on the notion of decision-making and look at the challenges our users are facing. What are some other pain points they’ve got right now, maybe in their business, or their commute? Why are they having this problem? Is it that the transit system is bad or is it because they haven’t learned to use the transit system? To come up with a solution for them, we have to identify their true problem. This is very similar to the concept we discussed earlier, of design thinking. If you remember, with design thinking, we’re talking about empathy research and how it can help us understand what the problem really is. 
2. 2. Memory: We also want to know if our audience’s frame of reference is up to date with modern technologies and tools. It might be that our users are trying to figure out an easier way to mail a check, when really it might be better for them to learn how to pay a bill online. Often I’m working on digital solutions, so I think about how we can do things in an online world that might be different from people’s paper-and-pencil worldview, or even a more traditional online worldview (i.e., email vs. text message or video conferencing or AI). One example of this is new tools that allow you to ask someone else to have a meeting with you. The tool automatically responds and says, “John is busy on Tuesday, but how about Wednesday?” There are many times when people’s frame of reference might be based on an outdated way of doing things, rather than on an understanding of the modern tools available to them. 
3. 3. Emotion: Many times, the challenges people encounter are tied to strong emotions. We want to look at what the pain drivers are in these situations. What might be causing your audience to be upset or or dissatisfied with the current solution? What’s the underlying source of that feeling? Going back to our taxi/Uber example, your problem might actually lie in the fact that you were worried about the timing, reliability, or safety of your ride. If we know the issue has to do with personal safety, then we can find a solution that addresses and overcomes that fear. We also want to know what specifically is causing the pain point — e.g., you need assurance that you’ll arrive at a certain location by a certain time because that’s when your boss is expecting you. 

All of these considerations help us think about what would really enhance our audience’s lives in the medium term. 

Soul searching: Realizing loftier goals (Awaken)

If we can both attract users to our product or service by aligning it with what they think they need and solve a longer-term problem for them, ultimately they’re going to stick around … if they feel like your product is matching their loftier goals. With the notion of awaken, I want you to think about soul searching. What would it mean to really awaken people’s passions? That desire they’ve always had to learn to play the piano, or write a book, or swim, or see their child graduate from college. 

Let’s consider which of our Six Minds can help us awaken our audience’s loftier goals. 

1. 1. Emotion: We want to think about setting our audience free to pursue these life goals. What would make them feel like they “made it”? Having an amount of wealth that allows them flexibility to travel? Buying a big enough home to be able to host five-course dinners for twelve? Getting tenure as a professor? We want to understand what those drivers are for people. In solving their problem, we can point to how our solution gets them to their intended destination. 

Sidenote: Pinpointing underlying emotional drivers can also help establish a positive feedback loop with customers who are enjoying a product or service. Are there tangible ways that we’ve affected them positively? Throughout the life cycle of a product or service, as we show people the immediate and longer-term benefits and ultimately demonstrate how this is helping them with their big-picture goals, we’re winning loyalty and brand ambassadors. Ideally, our clients start promoting our product for us because they like it so much. In my work, I’ve found there are ways to manage this type of life cycle. Because we’re talking about people’s deep-seated goals and corresponding emotions, this life cycle usually takes months. We want to think about what people are most hopeful for in the long term. What are they really trying to do, and what are they most afraid of that would stop them from getting there? What is the persona they’re striving to become? 

1. 2. Memory: Part of answering what they want to become and what they might be fearful of that would stop them comes from memory.   What constitutes success for them? Maybe for one person, everyone in his family was a farmer. For him, the notion of success lies in breaking free of that mold and going to college. Or the kid whose parents are both professors and longs to go WWOOFing, or farming on organic farms all over the world. In both cases, people are defining their goals by their past experience. 
2. 3. Decision-making: With problem solving, we want to get at what users feel like their long-term goal is. Part of that has to do with memory, but another part has to do with the steps they believe it takes to get to the point where they’ve “arrived.” This involves defining their problem space and how they think they can move around in that space to achieve their goal. 

These are all concepts we’ve talked about before. But here we’re thinking about framing these insights into something that’s very practical for us as marketers or product designers. What would attract our audience to the product? What would keep them using it in the medium term? What would make them feel like this was satisfying enough to keep using it, or even promote it? 

Case Study: Builders

In this case, our client sold construction products — think insulation, rebar, electrical wire – things like that. They had tools and technologies that performed better and were less expensive than some of the most popular products today. But what they were finding was that the builders, who were the ones doing the actual installing, were largely unwilling to change the way they were used to doing their job.

Our client was struggling with getting those who were set in their ways to adapt to new technologies that help them in the long run. Here’s how we used some of the Six Minds to help:

Problem-Solving. As we interviewed the builders through contextual interviews, we realized that they were laser-focused on efficiency more than anything else. Typically, they would offer the job at a fixed price, meaning that if any one project takes more than the time they estimated, they’re losing money — and time they could be spending on other projects. The longer the job took, the less profit the builders were making, which gave them great incentive to complete jobs as efficiently as possible. In installing insulation, for example, the builders would want to make sure — above cost or any other factor — that it was the fastest insulation to install. So my client’s high-performing, inexpensive, new-fangled insulation actually presented a challenge to these builders because they would need to spend time training their staff on how to install it. 

Attention. We haven’t used attention as much in these examples, but this was one case where we found that getting the builders’ attention was central to solving our client’s problem. It was clear that the builders were only paying attention to reducing the time of projects. They weren’t thinking about the long-term benefits of any one product over another, but rather the short-term implications of completing this project quickly so they could move onto the next project. Our client needed to market its product in such a way that it would be attractive to these busy, somewhat set-in-their-ways builders. 

Language. We observed that two very different languages were being spoken by the product manufacturer and the actual installers. The product manufacturers were using complex engineering terms, like “ProSeal Magnate,” which actually made the installers feel even more uncertain of the new products because they weren’t speaking the same language. In other words, they weren’t picking up what the manufacturers were putting down. This uncertainty also evoked some mistrust, which we’ll discuss below. 

Emotion. We sensed some fear in these conversations. The builders were worried that the new material would not work as well, and they’d have to go back and reinstall it. Naturally, it made sense that they would stick to the familiar product they already knew how to install. In a broader sense, though, we saw that the builders’ No. 1 fear was losing the trust of the general contractor, who wields the power to give them more work on subsequent projects. Maintaining a trusting relationship with the general contractor was crucial to these installment contractors keeping their business going.

Result. To bring it all together, we considered what it is the builders were attending to, how they were trying to fix their perceived problem, the language they were using, and the emotional drivers at play. Our findings suggested a very different approach for our client, the product manufacturer. We recommended that they focus on the time-saving potential of the new materials rather than anything else. In branding and promoting the products, it would be essential to use language familiar to the builders ensuring them that these could be put in faster and that they really worked. We recommended the manufacturer consider offering some free training and product samples to builders, and even reach out to general contractors to inform them of the benefits of the new products. 

Some of these findings may sound more obvious and less “aha moment,” but that’s often how we feel after analyzing our Six Minds data. It may not be earth-shattering, but if a finding points to a consideration that we might have otherwise missed, especially through more traditional audience research channels, it can completely change how we design and sell our products. Which is pretty “aha,” in my opinion. 

Previously, the client hadn’t considered any of these factors. Using the Six Minds, we were able to point to specific things like the fragile relationships between contractor and general contractor, and what these contractors were attending to through their language and emotions. Armed with these findings, we were able to make recommendations for a system that encourages sales around these cognitive and emotional drivers. 

Case Study: High net worth individuals

In a very different example, another client in the financial industry wanted to explore what sort of products or services they might be able to offer high net worth individuals. My team and I set out to try to discover some of the unmet needs this audience had. 

Attention. One thing we noted was not necessarily what our audience was focusing on, like with our builders, but what they were not focusing on. It’s a gross understatement to say this group was busy. Whether they were young professionals, working parents, or retired adults, they filled their days to bursting with commitments and activities. They were in the office, they were seeing a personal trainer, they were picking up their kid from after-school care, they were cooking, they were doing community service, they were playing on a rec softball league. They were constantly racing to get as much done as possible and get the most out of life. Because of all their competing commitments, needs, and priorities tugging at them from different directions, our audience’s attention was pretty scattered. 

Emotion. It was clear that everyone in this audience had ambitions of productivity and success. Going further, however, we saw some key differences in the underlying goals of our audience depending on their life stage. The young professionals were making a lot of money, and many of them were just discovering themselves and starting to define what success and happiness meant to them. As you might imagine, the folks we talked to with small children had very different definitions of those concepts. They were focused on the success of the family unit. They wanted to make sure their kids had whatever they needed for everything from soccer practice to college. Though this group was hyper-focused on family life, they were also worried about losing their sense of self. The older adults we talked to circled back to that first notion of self-discovery. One gentleman who really wanted to keep exploring music built a bandstand in his basement so his friends could play with him. Another decided to follow his dream of taking historical tours, even though he knew it maybe wasn’t “cool,” but it really made him happy. 

Language. The differences in people’s deep, underlying life goals also came through in the language they used. When we asked them to define “luxury,” the young professionals mentioned first-class tickets and one-of-a-kind adventures in exotic places, getting at their deeper goals of self-discovery. The people with families talked about going out for dinner somewhere the kids could run around outside and they didn’t have to worry about the dishes, getting at their goals of family togetherness and also just the goals of maintaining sanity as a parent. Older adults like the gentleman I mentioned above talked about taking that trip of a lifetime, getting at their deeper goals of feeling like they’ve really lived and experienced everything they want to. As we know from considering language, something as simple as a word (e.g., “luxury”) can have drastically different meanings to our different audiences. 

Solution. These findings, gleaned using the Six Minds, were the keys to making products specific to the needs of these different groups of high net worth individuals. When we offered our recommendations to the client, we focused on our biggest takeaway, which was that relative to the other populations, the older adults were really underserved.

When we looked at how credit cards and other banking instruments were being marketed, we found that they tended to target either young professionals (e.g., skydiving in Oahu) or they would target families (e.g., 529 college savings plans). There was surprisingly little that was targeting older adults around the financial tools they needed for self-discovery. Fortunately, we now had all this Six Minds data we were able to give our client to help change that.

Case Study: Homepage interface for small business owners

This last example concerns some small business owners we interviewed on behalf of an online payments system. We were trying to figure out how best to present the payment system — including the client’s e-commerce cybersecurity tools — to those small business owners. Overall, we found that findings from quite a few of our Six Minds yielded crucial insights into this audience. 

Attention. As we were interviewing them and watching them work, we found that the small business owners were pulled in all sorts of directions, making products, selling, marketing, working on back-office systems, ordering materials, getting repairs done, hiring, fending off lawsuits (OK, that was just one guy, but you get the idea). There were all kinds of things competing for their attention, but ultimately what they were attending to was driving new growth for the company. They didn’t have a lot of time or mental energy to spend on thinking about new ways of receiving payments, or the cybersecurity implications of an online payments system. They just wanted to be able to receive payments safely, and for someone else to take care of all the details. 

Language. In our client’s existing marketing language, it was clear that they really wanted their customers to know that they had this type of compliance system, with top-notch security standards in place. We saw this earlier with the insulation manufacturers, and it’s actually a trend we come across frequently in our work: companies like to use very technical terms to show their prowess ... yet this often works as a disadvantage. From observing the small business owners, we learned very quickly that the language they used (e.g., “safe way to get paid”) was hugely different from that of our client (e.g., “cybersecurity regulatory compliance”). 

Memory. These busy business owners were experts in their specialty, not cybersecurity — and they didn’t really have the time or interest to change that fact. They weren’t impressed by the rationale behind many of the client’s sophisticated tech tools because they didn’t have any preconceived notions or frame of reference for how those tools should work. Appealing to Memory didn’t work in this case! 

Emotion and Decision-making. Ultimately, our audience just wanted a product they could trust. The concept of cybersecurity wasn’t clearly meeting their No. 1 goal of growing the business so, perhaps ironically, this notion of cybersecurity ended up making them lose trust. 

Solution. Because our audience had no frame of reference for cybersecurity, we knew that trying to impress them with techie talk wasn’t going to be advantageous for our client. What we did instead was go back to what they were attending to, and think about their deepest desires and fears. No. 1 desire: business growth. No. 1 fear: business failure. So what we focused on was having them imagine what a 10 percent sales increase this month would mean for them. Imagining those dollar signs got them really excited. Doing that allowed us to pull them in by appealing to their emotions. 

We also knew they needed a way to pull the trigger on this decision. So we provided facts to allay their fears about any complications with a new technology. We showed them that people who had this cybersecurity tool were much less likely to have their credit cards stolen, for example. We used examples and language that these business owners could grasp, and which helped them make their decision. 

Concrete recommendations:

• ● Appeal through a product’s advertisements, promotions, and brand promise.
  • ○ Look at attention and vision. What is this audience looking for? What would draw them in? What is the language they use to describe what they’re looking for?
• ● Enhance the product or service design you are building. 
  • ○ Look at decision-making/problem-solving, memory, and frameworks. What problem do they really need to solve, and what will ultimately solve that problem? How, if at all, will their framework and perspective have to change? What parts of their old metaphor work? Which parts do not? 

• ● Awaken people’s life goals. 
  • ○ Look at deep emotions. What will resonate with this audience and link to their biggest goals and fears? What parts of the product can help to allay their fears? How can you help show progress toward their goals?