Using Mindsets as a research method for user profiling: How tapping into users’ ways of thinking helped improve our design solutions

Let’s set the scene here, what are mindsets?

Mindsets are a type of user profiling that help us identify and understand users’ states of mind during different life circumstances, which can be translated into building more user-centric products and services. They explore how people approach a problem and the experiences that influence their decisions over time. They are particularly helpful when designing a digital service with one core function that serves a wide range of users who could have overlapping needs and ways of thinking at different points of using the service. By creating mindsets as artefacts, in the way personas are, we can deeply understand the life challenges and emotions our users are going through, and create a service that adapts to their requirements.

While personas contain static demographics and focus on users’ lifestyles and motivations to solve problems in (what can be) fixed situations, mindsets focus on how people’s thoughts can evolve before, during and after the use of a service. There are different ways to create mindsets. One way is following Indi Young’s thinking styles method, another is Giulia Bazoli and Chiara Lino’s technique of framing fluid mindsets. Both approaches instigated our inspiration of putting them into practice.

We created mindsets to serve as a springboard for improving two existing UK digital government services, one for helping in emergency situations abroad, and another for finding professional organisations abroad. By better understanding what life experiences, emotions and attitudes users encountered to solve their problems, we were able to craft more useful design solutions.

How did we create mindsets?

We interviewed 24 users with diverse backgrounds and experiences and asked what attributes influenced their decisions when solving their problems, such as time pressures and knowledge of their situation, and at what stages in their journey they occurred.

Using this information, we mapped out the steps a user would take in their journey, with these attributes woven into each step accordingly. For example, one user had ample time before his travels, but was stressed during his medical emergency abroad. We also took note of the emotions users endured, their positive moments and the root cause of their biggest fears throughout their journey. We then had a clearer picture of every individual’s entire experience and where they needed the most support.

While documenting the journeys, we began to see commonalities in attributes between each user’s experience. For the most common attributes, we created spectrums to understand the severity or priority of each one for the user. For example, if the attribute was willing to spend money, the spectrum might be low — moderate — high. By mapping where each user fitted on each spectrum, we could eventually see the areas with the smallest and largest clusters of users. This gave us a clearer view into what struggles certain user groups had, when they experienced them, and trends between individuals. It began to look something like this.

We used this knowledge to build out the common mindsets users experienced throughout the first, middle and end parts of their journey. We also outlined the role the service needed to play in supporting the users’ mindsets, for example playing a wizard-like character who automates complex tasks, which helped us visualise what traits the service should ideally take on, and when. Lastly, we thought about the future evolutions of each mindset and how they might adapt to a changing world to stay relevant. The end result looked something like this.

What did we learn from creating them?

Users’ personal circumstances played a big role in how our services spoke to them.

People shared a similar mindset of ‘searching for reassurance’ between the two services, yet the role the government needed to play in communicating to these users differed — one being a trustworthy parent and the other being a credible teacher with subject knowledge. This was due to the circumstances users were in at the time of needing the service. For example, users would be panicked and out of their comfort zone in an emergency abroad, and searching for reassurance through a parent-like figure for their safety. However, if they were trying to navigate a foreign legal system abroad, users would need to understand processes, and therefore search for reassurance through a credible, guiding source of information.

Users experienced at least two different states of mind within the duration of using a service, so we had to adapt our designs accordingly.

Users had more time before travelling to diligently organise their plans. This emerged from them being high on the ‘preparedness’ scale early on in their journey. Therefore, the service needed to provide accurate guidance for users to make informed decisions about their future travels, and ask detailed questions early on so it could be of most use later during their travels, when they were likely to be time poor and need assistance. As users would be worried and searching for reassurance during an emergency incident abroad, the service needed to respond quickly and efficiently, with actionable advice front and centre.

Creating mindsets can be time consuming and overwhelming, so it’s advised to get a handful of team members involved.

We kept asking ourselves if our conclusions were reflective of the interviews we had, and if we had minimised enough bias in our analysis. These weren’t easy questions to answer, but presenting our progress to team members and being questioned as we went along helped us scrutinise our work. It’s also worth noting that we created mindsets shortly after our interviews too, which helped keep the conversations fresh in our minds.

For more UX research ideas and processes you can read my case studies at www.roshnighedia.com.

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