Buying a car
When creating a mental model, we don't start with an opportunity. We start with the desire to learn more about how our users think and act. However, we need a focus area. For this chapter's focus area, I have chosen car buying. It's a serious, well-considered decision for most of us, and choosing and buying a new car can be a lengthy process. This process involves thoughts, motivations, ability changes, reactions, principles, emotions, behaviors, and triggers. It will surely lead to many different mental spaces.
Our research goal is understanding the user, but we will put that understanding to good use by supporting the user with solutions in different mental spaces. We will focus on people, not tools--minds over software. We could claim that our opportunity is to make the car buying an easy and joyful process. That would be an error. Did we just assume that buying a car is hard or not joyful? When creating a mental model, we want to start with a blank slate. The best starting...
