Re-purposing Existing Data

Boris’ dream was to marry the quantitative, demographics type of marketing data to the qualitative, contextual inquiry data and make it more usable in design sessions. As many folks working for large merchants have observed, “We have so much data sitting out there not really getting used in the design process.”

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“The good data was there, but not the story. A mental model was the right way to tell the story,”

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“After I finished the top parts of the mental models, that’s when I got collaborative.” He had slotted only a few existing features under the behavior towers in the model. Boris would roll up the scroll of paper and take it with him to meetings. All the disciplines would gather in the room together — the user interface guys, designers, and business team and they would start to add services and features and content below the line, aligned with the behavioral towers in the model that they supported. The group would include new ideas and things to ask the vendor for. Then Boris would organize all these items into layers according to whether they were interactive widgets, reading material, merchandising connections, or had to do with in-store or mobile situations instead of strictly online.

Finally the organization had a picture of what they were doing. In the one mental model, here were all the bright, shiny ideas folks had and how they came into play for the customer — or not.

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Posted on August 30, 2021