You voted in our poll and the results are in: Our next read will be Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter.

The next meeting will be 6pm on Thursday, April 5th, 2012 at Digitas Health in Center City. Registration is required (security won’t admit you into the building if you’re not on the list).

Register here: http://uxbookclubphl2012-3.eventbrite.com/

See you there!

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior

by Indi Young | Rosenfeld | Amazon

Meeting Details

When: May 3, 2011 from 6-8pm

Where: IndyHall - 20 North 3rd St, Unit 201 - Philadelphia, PA 19106

RSVP: EventBrite

Indi plans to join us since she’ll be in Philly for the J. Boye Conference! Feel free to attend the meeting even if you don’t finish the book or read it - the more the merrier!

Refreshments will be provided by our friends at MissionStaff.

Use the discount code UXBOOKPHILLY for 30% off your Rosenfeld Media purchase of Mental Models or other products. Thanks to our friends at Rosenfeld Media for the discount!

If you don’t have time to read the book, the UIE Spoolcast is a good listen.

Recap [Live Tweets]

• Working with engineers and task analysis inspired @IndiYoung at first. State machines weren’t enough — “people have emotional reactions”
• One thing still missing is the ability to click a “tower” in a mental model & hear the quotes from participants that support it.
• Scoping MMs can be challenging. You have to find the affinities — where you’re hearing the same things from many people.
• Creating a “meta mental model” can help identify appropriate scope. Craft a clearly written essay question to gather data in ~1wk
• Can also use past research or your own knowledge about people as a start to narrow down scope and where affinities may lie.
• Make sure the top section of a MM is focused on people and tool agnostic — the bottom is for your business goals and services.
• The important thing about generative research is to forget about your product — try to think about before your product existed.
• How do you keep designers and others from defaulting to existing product? Gentle but firm teasing! Though depends on the team.
• It’s all about empathy — try being an actor, making everyone on the team speak in first person, present tense.
• Getting into a semantic debate — MMs are built from “tasks” but “goals” seems like a better term for some. @IndiYoung uses “tasks” less now
• Rather than dealing with “task” baggage @IndiYoung has moved to saying “behaviors” “motivations” “beliefs” “decisions” “emotional reactions”
• We don’t talk to people about *our* goal — we talk to them about *their* situation…and the emotions involved.
• Don’t trash the emotions in the search for “tasks”! It’s all important, finding the level of granularity can be challenging.
• The diagram is not a method in itself - it’s a way to tell a story better. Print diff. parts at diff. times to tell diff. stories 
• Be careful (especially in English) to tell apart opinions from beliefs. Beliefs are often implicit, and more desirable in MMs.
• How to get to the root of a mental model in interviews? Practice. @IndiYoung keeps putting her fingers up like antennae :)
• Practice asking yourself “Do I really understand the situation?” and don’t stop probing until you can really answer in detail.
• Use the idea of the toddler who always asks “Why?” past the point of irritation. Be that 4yo, but stop at Irrational Land.
• Total strangers will totally open up to you the moment they know you’re paying attention to them.
• Stay with the “Why?” and “How come?” — avoid “How?” since people know you’re a researcher and may default to your product. 
• Terry Gross on “Fresh Air” is one of @IndiYoung’s fav examples to show generative questions versus leading (for entertainment, in that case)
• RT @livlab: “Practice interviewing and getting to core of a story by listening to radio and see where you diverge from interviewer.”
• Scary for most people to talk to strangers, but harness your curiosity about what makes people tick.Start slow & build confidence
• Be sensitive to interview environment. You don’t talk about finances in public. Can’t talk about your boss in the cubicle farm.
• Attendees have had lots of experiences getting great quotes from participants *after* leaving the formal interview.
• Time to play: @IndiYoung interviewed some cats and has brought some mental models for us to explore.

Check out the Cat Mental Models example and lots of other great supplements to the book over at the Rosenfeld site. Thanks again for joining us, Indi!

Storytelling for User Experience: Crafting Stories for Better Design

by Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks | Rosenfeld Media | Amazon

Meeting Details

When: Wed, March 2, 2011 from 6-8pm

Where: Happy Cog - 109 South 13th Street - Third Floor (Unit 3 South) - Philadelphia, PA 19107

RSVP: Eventbrite

Use the discount code UXBOOKPHILLY for 30% off your purchase. This discount applies to all products at Rosenfeld Media. (Thanks to our friends at Rosenfeld Media for the discount!)

Refreshments will be sponsored by our friends at MissionStaff.