Posted by Indi Young on March 8, 2010 | Comments (5)
When I was making a lot of mental models in the get-it-to-market-yesterday dot com boom of the late 1990's, I used a technique that resulted in a mental model plus gap analysis brainstorm in the course of one day. Now that it's the not-in-this-economy post economic slump, I think it's time to put this technique to use again. Today, in fact, I got together with a group of nine talented design agency folks and we spent 2.75 hours putting together a set of towers based on 24 individual stories, and then spent rest of the day brainstorming ideas to support those towers. Here's how we did it.
Solicit Some Stories Ahead of Time
A week in advance, solicit stories from people. If your proposed audience segments happen to be online, ask for stories via email, tweets, Facebook, etc. If these folks aren't online, then ask as many people as you can to solicit stories from friends & family in their daily life and write you a summary, using that person's voice. (Use the personal pronoun "I" when recapping the stories.) When you ask for a story, be very explicit about what you want to hear, and give examples. As the stories come in, sort them roughly into piles of similarity.
Read & Write Labels
On the day of the workshop, gather everyone together either in a room with lots of sticky notes, or online with a shared Google spreadsheet. Assign one person to read and comb out verb+noun labels, and two or three people to scribble these labels down, either on sticky notes or in the Google spreadsheet. Assign the rest of the folks (at least one) to organize the labels as they are created. So, yeah, that's four people minimum for this exercise. You probably want to cut off the number of people participating at 10 or so.
The person who reads and combs needs to have some experience combing and labeling, needs to know the rules that make it easy, and needs to know what to skip and when to toss out stories completely because they are not detailed enough. (I tossed three out of 24 stories on the floor, with a memorable flourish.) The reader has the option to read the stories out loud or to herself. Reading the stories out loud is more of a learning opportunity for the whole team, but takes a lot of time. Reading them to herself saves time, but makes the day less interesting to the other folks in the room. No matter which option she picks, the reader will announce verb+noun labels out loud, indicating which of the folks scribbling is supposed to write it down. With multiple folks scribbling, the reader can call out labels in quick succession, without having to wait for each of them to be completely written down. In today's session we managed to produce about 100 labels in 2 hours.
As each label is generated, another person (or set of people) accepts each label and puts it with other "like" labels, grouping by affinity of behavior. Encourage these folks to group into small groups of 5 or so labels. That's not a hard-and-fast rule--some of our groups had 10 and 20 labels, but most groups had 5 or 6 labels.
Re-Organize the Set & Make Headers
Once all the stories are read and the labels are written and in rough groups, as a final pass go through these groups and make adjustments. The team I worked with today had a really good grasp of grouping, yet we still spent 40 minutes re-jiggering things and putting the stray emotional label with the behavior that engendered it. As we adjusted things, we made up headings (again using verb+nouns) for each tower of things. We were careful not to make up a heading based on just one label. Instead, we made a solid tower of labels, stared at it for a second, and then made up a heading for it.
Brainstorm by Tower
As the final step of the day--the one that should take at least half the alloted time, visit each tower and brainstorm ideas for it. Write these ideas up with little notes and align them underneath the tower you are studying. We used red font on sticky notes to easily distinguish an idea from the original set of labels. Start with a tower that seems interesting. Keep brainstorming and building on ideas for that tower until you hit a lull, then move your focus to another tower. You don't have to go in any order. To keep the creative juices flowing, it's better to follow the path of interest. Maybe you will find towers that just aren't exciting, and that's okay. Skip them for now. Come back to them next quarter, because I guarantee your team will come up with enough other ideas to keep you busy for a while.
This lightening quick approach gets your team going in a day. You still get to work with real outside stories from real people. And you move to brainstorming and gap analysis quickly, giving folks in upper management (for whom the word "research" induces queasiness) a sense of confidence and progress.
Wish You Could Have Help?
If you don't feel experienced enough to do the combing on the fly or the grouping and adjustment of the labels, I'm happy to get you going with a bit of personal assistance. I've helped teams produce a perfectly-worded call for stories to send out to their audience segments. A week later, the team will send me the stories they solicited, organized roughly into themes. I will either get on the phone or show up in person to read through the stories and comb out labels, which is where a lot of teams feel unsure of themselves the first time through. Just a few hours of my time helps you feel sure you've got a solid beginning to your mental model. I'm happy to help!
Posted by Indi Young on January 27, 2010 | Comments (0)
Hey, you wanted to test your combing/labeling skills, right? You wanted to hone your ability to grab the most descriptive verb possible, and pull out the implications of what the person is really trying to say? Here is a set of examples with a little discourse about why I suggest the label I suggest. The original labels have been suggested by people I am mentoring through the combing process.
- original label: Compare Other (Higher Paying but Fewer Benefits) Jobs w/Mine - "I put a pencil to it. I mean, I know exactly what my benefits are, and I've looked at other jobs ... if I was to give up my benefits and retirement ... that I get now, because the first five years you went somewhere, you're not vested, so you're basically giving that up, and that's ten percent of my salary, so you put a pencil to it, and then a lot of people don't pay all your health insurance ..."
- my change: Since his emphasis is "putting a pencil to it," I assumed that meant that he calculated the value of his benefits, and I changed the label to start with the verb "calculate."
- question: He calculates the value of his benefits because he is comparing his low-pay/good-benefits job with a high-pay/poor-benefits one. Should there be 2 tasks: 'compare my job...' w/a subtask of 'calculate value...'? or one: 'calculate value of benefits to compare my low-pay job w/a high-pay one'?
- my answer: Good point. I actually used the label "Calculate How Much My Benefits Add to My Income Here" so that it emphasizes that he is calculating to come to a decision point. In conversation with him, the gist of this bit was that he was deciding if the benefits were still high enough to compensate for going out and looking for another job. Instead, I can change this label to "Decide If Benefits Here Add Up to Compensate Low Wage." There are several other tasks around "Consider Leaving Low Paying Job if Good Benefits Cut" and "Value Benefits Equally w/Career Interest" that I don't think we need to break it into sub-tasks. The answer about sub-tasks is always in the context of what other tasks you've pulled, and if they basically cover what the guy is intending to communicate to us.
- original label: Feel Stripping Out Benefits Hurts Company in Long Run - "Now, that's been changed, and a lot of new people coming in ... aren't gonna get that, so... I actually think they've hurt their selves. A lot of benefits are being stripped ... as new people come in, and I think ... in the long run it's gonna hurt them."
- my change: This is his opinion. We can skip opinions.
- question: What if his philosophy is: "good benefits are needed to retain talented people?" He is only staying at this job for the excellent benefits.
- my answer: Since he is not in a position to hire people, and he is not talking about hiring policies or changing the benefits, it's just him griping. He hasn't even made a move to recommend changing the benefits policy yet. If he had formally recommended changes instead of just complaining, then we could use this. But his beliefs about good benefits to retain talent were not put into practice at all. He was complaining because we gave him an opportunity to complain. He might not have anyone who solicits complaints in his normal day-to-day life, so it may not be his normal behavior and should not be captured in the mental model.
- original label: Think Lower Quality Employees Result From Stingier Benefits - "... and the new people coming in ... you get less quality people, I think."
- my change: This is the same opinion, basically. I was trying really hard to steer him away from "like this/hate this" discussions, but he definitely started out thinking this was a conversation about what his opinions were. Usually these things are the fault of the interviewer, and you get to read it with a grain of salt and say to yourself, "Wait just a minute here. This doesn't explain anything. It starts to get at a philosophy but falls way short." So skip this one. Delete it.
- original label: Serve on Committee to Write 5 Yr Tech Plan - "I'm on the committee to write the technology plan, you know, the five-year plan we've got to get
rewritten."
- my change: If he was talking about writing a 5-year plan, then the verb "write" is the key here.
- original label: Work w/Internal & External Groups - "I also had to work with not only our people here, but I went to ... meet with the contractors and do follow-ups and then meet with contractors individually."
- my change: "Work" is a pretty non-descriptive verb. I changed this to "Follow Up with External Contractors."
- original label: Keep in Touch w/Local & State Employees via Meetings, Calls, & Emails to Determine Needs - "The state, the meetings, yes, there were meetings with the local employees to see what they needed, because they have a supervisor on
site, and then the rest of it was basically phone calls, emails with the people from the state with their organization."
- my change: I clarified the label to "Solicit Network Requirements from State Employees."
- question: His behavior is "meet w/people" but the underlying reason is to "determine requirements." Hence your label, right?
- my answer: Yeah. "Meet" is a really vague verb, as is "Keep In Touch." When I see those, it's an indication to dig deeper into the reason for the meetings and the keeping in touch. "What is going on here? Oh, it's to solicit the requirements from people, over time, via a bunch of channels, but my main goal is to solicit requirements."
- original label: Consider Future Needs when Making Recommendations - "a cheap one that you could get with ... 50 licenses, or you could spend another 100
bucks and get an unlimited number of licenses ... and she's like, 'Well, we don't need that. We'll never have more than 25,' ... I'm like, 'You don't know this.'"
- my change: The label is a little too high level. I changed it to "Argue That $100 Is Cheap Compared to Risk of Needing More Than 25 Licenses."
- question: Does the specificity of "$100" complicate the grouping?
- my answer: Nope. I will ignore the specifics as I group. At this point when you are labeling quotes, I want you to be specific so that sometimes I can just group the label without even reading the quote. I want the label to cut to the chase so I can use it quickly, since grouping takes so much mental capacity. I will probably put this with other tasks that are specific about other things, but general about persuading someone about spending or future costs or upgrade decisions.
- original label Get Called for Help b/c My Extensive Working Knowledge of the System - "There's probably nobody else here that really understands it from A to Z... if something goes wrong, they call me, because ... I have such a working knowledge of every intricate bit and piece ... I normally do have the answer."
- my change: "Get Called" is a passive verb--he's not doing anything. I labeled it "Answer Questions About The Systems I Know So Well."
- original label: Express Frustration w/Inability to Reach Vendor - "I brought up the fact ... that I couldn't get hold of them, and the guy that's in charge ... he's on there, too, and he goes, "Well, you can always call the center. They always know how to get hold of the guy.".. And so I told him ... "I couldn't even get through your center ... even they weren't answering," and he, you could tell, is silent, you know."
- my change: This label is in the middle. Either it's an emotion (Feel Frustrated) or it's a behavior (Express My Frustration to Vendor). I think it's the latter.
And I would label it more clearly as "Point Out Vendor is Not Always Available,
Despite Claims."
