Nick Forrester

Mental model mapping in discovery

The world of car finance is mirky, badly regulated and poorly understood by consumers, yet it is a vast and growing industry. We set up a user-centred process to launch a brand new product to offer better value and transparency, whilst also supporting unmet needs.

Google Sprint inspired discovery workshops

We ran a discovery workshop with the whole team to establish a long-term goal. This helped us establish our three top challenges to explore and shared understanding of where they were and who was involved, for stakeholders, partners and users.

User research

Our initial Discovery interviews we asked participants to tell us about the day they got their car. And dug into the detail to tease our the tasks, philosophies and emotions that participants used to help them get a car. This is the building blocks of a mental model of this space.

This gave us a rich and deep understanding of how people think when they get a car and get the finance for it too.

Identifying tasks, emotions and philosophies

Each research transcript is packed full with information about what people do in support of getting a car. A mental model diagram is a framework for doing and sharing research, which identifies thematic blocks, or ways of thinking about something, from which we can identify and expand opportunities based on deep insight. As a team we conducted a number of workshops to read through the data and wrote how might we statements to spell out our opportunities to take forward.

Developing and testing ideas

Based on this research we took two product ideas further. The mental model map provided a solid base to refer back to and update as we learned more. The first idea we tested didn’t work, so coming back to our shared knowledge wall to find another idea to take forward was a huge bonus,