Evolving Users: the framing of fluid Mindsets

Years after they have been introduced, personas still spark heated debates. They are the one design method that is taught in schools, used in all stages of product development, and even championed by non-designers. While a decisive step forward from traditional customer segmentation, and towards a more user-centered approach, Personas have established themselves with the same stiffness and crystallised characteristics they were trying to challenge.

We created Mindsets as an approach and a tool that could replace Personas. That could answer the same needs of understanding and empathising with the final users at all levels of the organisation and at all stages of product development, without turning into static silhouettes of imaginary people. That could describe users’ attitudes, thinking and feeling towards a product or a service, instead of overwhelming product teams into users’ unnecessary and maybe not even useful details. That could evolve within the product or service we were building for users. And that could actively probe teams to iterate on them, evolve them together, and conduct continuous research along with continuous development.

In this talk, we will walk the audience through our process to formulate Mindsets, why we believe they work better than Personas, how to make your own, and how to apply them throughout the design process.