UB: report from the front, week nine
I believe that Amy Grant’s music, much like rose wine, is much maligned. There’s a line in one of her songs, for instance ”... how do you argue with a feeling in your bones about what is and what isn’t meant to be.” Makes me think of the UB project.
Let me explain, and sorry-by the way-for not keeping up with my posts on this initiative, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind set of weeks.
Last I reported, we were beginning interviews for our mental models. Five different audience segments, 70 individual conversations. Three interviews in, both Rebecca and I sensed that something was amiss. We couldn’t quite articulate what wasn’t working, but we knew that we weren’t getting the information we needed. Part of the issue, we thought, was not having the right people to interview. But there was more to the issue than that, we knew. She and I talked, decided to sleep on it; when we met the next day, we found that we’d arrived at the same solution by different routes. The answer: re-engage mental models mastermind Indi Young to help us revise our scope statements, re-write our prompts, and lead one model interview for each of the audience segments we were studying. And that’s exactly what she did, and it’s exactly what we needed. (And Indi, if you’re reading this, you’re my hero!)
Toggling like this cost us some effort-it meant rescreening and rescheduling a number of people. It cost us money. It cost us time. And it also cost us some comfort-I had to learn a different and new way of interviewing. But it was exactly the right thing to do for the project, and it also led to some really terrific outcomes:
1. We learned that we didn’t need to interview as many people as we originally intended. In fact, we were able to cut the list by over 30%.
2. We found a new audience segment—people we call pathfinders, that fall between matchseekers and solution seekers.
3. We found that our six audience segments divide into two clusters, or clouds, or continuums, if you will—each cloud having a number of shared characteristics.
The interviews are rocking and rolling now (go, UB scheduling team!); we’re slated to finish them up in the next week or so. And in the meantime, we’re going to start combing through each of the completed interviews for behaviors, feelings, philosophies, intents, and motivations. How fun is that!
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