Brain Maps

Transcript

1. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) MYKA HECHT-WENDT: Hello? OK, there we go. Great. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks to UX Australia for doing what you do and having us all here today. I'm Myka, I'm slightly terrified to be up here. I will be talking about brain maps and a few ideas we have around how we experiencing things and how we're mapping out our experiences internally as well as externally. So let's jump in. So recently I started a new job in Melbourne and part of my job is research and getting to know the people that are using our product better. I'm very much in the business of getting to know people. I'm their product designer and everything I do and everything I make is for people. And while I was starting my new job, I was also studying through an online learning platform and it's free, most of it. I was doing a course called learning how to learn. This is basically where we do an exploration of how the brain learns new things and how we pick up on patterns and how we form our own habits. I thought how I could overlay some of this within product design and some of the same concepts that are overlapping and also full disclaimer, these are all just thoughts ABC and ideas so if you disagree with anything let's just chat further. Part of what we do is make software for tracking and delivery businesses. Uber has definitely set up that expectation so that is something we want to follow through and continue with. If you've ever been waiting for a package at home or you're waiting for a gas technician to fix your gas and you want to see how far they are, that is basically what we do. We are in the process of updating one of our navigational apps which is a mapping and scheduling tool. So, so far we have about seven personas or user groups of people and one of those groups is technicians or tradies as we like to call them. Something that I've found when we were doing a bit more research is a lot of these tradies, or the technicians, were male and also in their late 40s to 50s. So we set up with our interviews and did our research and got talking to our clients here in Australia as well as in the UK. And this is a group of people that I started to feel very disjointed from. This was definitely a group that I knew the least about. So, I kind of gravitated towards the one person that I knew kind of fitted in within this group and that was my dad. Now, he's no tradie but he fits within this kind of description. So, the more I spoke to him about the products and the apps and the websites that he was using, the more I realised how different we were. So, I also noticed how he uses his phone. So, this is my dad using his phone and he - you can see he would use his left index finger whereas I use my right thumb to scroll. Our body language and posture was completely different and I was wondering why we learn how to use things that are so unique to us. So, there's no right or wrong here, it was just very different. So as designers around within our industry we often talk about things like mental models and conceptual models. Basically, these are just patterns that we formed by ourselves, it's how we think something works. A mental model often refers to a user's underlying expectation or it's an assumption of how something works. So, things like swiping left or right, are things that we very much learn to do and now they're just part of our lives. Other mental models or patterns that I'm used to, I can easily search for something now, I know how to add an event to a calendar. I can switch on anyone's TV, except
2. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) Page 2 of 3 for the one at work, I haven't figured that one out yet! So, it's not just about the design of something it's also about the behaviour that goes with it. So how is our behaviour developed over time? Part of it comes down to how we assimilate information and how we pick up on these different cues. We have many different ways in which our brain thinks, essentially and how we develop these patterns or our maps over time. So, three of the ways, there's a couple. But three of them here include the focus mode, the de fuse mode and we put those two modes together and we form a piece of information or a chunk which is essentially a package of information. So, let's unwrap this package. The focus mode. This is when you're concentrating on something. This is how we learn new things. This is responsible for our attention, our short-term memory, decision making as well as executing our daily activities. So, you can think of it as bringing a challenging email or studying for an exam. That's when you're in the focus mode. So, the defuse mode is when we allow our minds to wander freely. This is where our thinking starts to become creative and conceptual. And this happens when you allow yourself to just not - not particularly be focused on any one thing. So, this is why sports and exercise is particularly good for you because it naturally bases your body in a mode of defuse thinking. And this doesn't happen in one particular area of the brain but all over. A rather silly example that happened to me the other day was recently when I was shopping. Now, I'm a die-hard Bachelor fan and I realised that at some point while I was through the shopping aisles that Mary, a contestant on the current Bachelor, is a cook. She's not from a place called Cooke and somehow my mind had seen this and thought that Cooke was a place and it was only while I was going about my daily business that I realised my brain had made an assumption that Cooke was a place, even though I know the formatting of the show was the name and what they did. That was just a silly example of that. So, what is a chunk in a chunk is what the brain has learned in the focus mode and start to intertwine these pieces to. This is where the chunks are stored in the memory and we start archiving them. This is where we start making our own mental models, our patterns and habits start forming. This is why you can drive a car and use a GPS system at the same time. (inaudible) Why is any of this important? MYKA HECHT-WENDT: (Inaudible) plan and predict is am based on their own systems. So before entering our design, it will probably leave them frustrated. When we know what people are comfortable with, we can leverage this knowledge to build something using and long lasting. To me, the word intuitive means it's new and exciting but I feel comfortable and familiar, I know what to do. Another reason is that will power is an extremely valuable resource and which doe want to use it up unnecessarily. People struggle to remember the new system. Our focus mode goes on overdrive at any point of applied will power which often leads to our own procrastination. So, anything with more than two to three steps will probably leave us overwhelmed. So never have more clicks to fix it.
3. UX Australia 2019 -29th August, Breakout session (AUUXAU2908B) Page 3 of 3 MYKA HECHT-WENDT: Another reason is reward. Most popular products reward our brain in some way. So, after we've applied our mental information, we get something back. This is very much a mental model from the school system as in do your homework and you get a gold star. Mobile from time saved on an online order ore checking imaginary boxes or receive ing a new like and getting that hit of dopamine, whatever there is orders it's definitely in proportion to the task. MYKA HECHT-WENDT: The problem here, however, is that we also started creating products that are encroaching on our mental state. We've set up a culture of mindless scrolling, that intentionally mimic our brain modes, that's why Snapchat and Instagram are so popular because they package up your memories and it's between defuse modes and particular modes. The benefit here is that we've never been more in tune with what users have needed and users actually want and need. We're in a space where consumer empathy and ethics are celebrated. By tapping into users’ brain maps we can provide a frame cut. So, going back to our technician, who we named Joe. Who went beyond creating a persona for the product. We started creating a brain map of their experience and expectations. So, find out their daily task, what requires their focused attention and also what did they like to do for fun outside of work. MYKA HECHT-WENDT: We found out what they needed from a place of psychological safety within the work space and what they wanted in their daily life and job. And also, what they're like, which was to feel connected to people. Funnily enough we found out that a technician, the best part of most of the day was when they were leaving work. It's not just because they didn't like their job, they just wanted to get home after a long day. So how can we facilitate that feeling in our products? How can we help this person do their job? Feeling safe and accomplished at the end of the day. How can we help them feel more connected to the people around them? How can we get them excited, yes, to leave work but also to return the next day, ready to go? Could I it be through brain mapping or a welcome message in the morning or a coffee break. I don't know the answer yet, but I do know when we start asking questions like these our product becomes part of someone's life. That's how we build connections to products. It's how we can increase our conversion rates and as a by-product increase our attention and keep our people. It's how we improve our brain's perception and that's why we as people could use an app that other apps are doing. We're bridging the gap between people and products and that is something to think about. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]