I am mentoring a Jerusalem startup, Datovo, on the user experience of their products. They’re still pretty early in their process, and I was talking with founder Yuval Wirzberger (great guy!) about who would be using their mobile app. Yuval’s initial pitch was that the app was for the “super mom”: an active woman managing her own business and the scheduling and finances of her family. We talked about all the various features of the app that would make her life easier.
After further questioning, Yuval told me that the initial release of the product would focus on the business side of the solution, with a focus on a specific industry. That made me think that Super Mom really wasn’t the target at this stage of the app, and I suggested we do an exercise.
So we mapped out how the Super Mom approaches her typical day as a mental model. A mental model is a way to chart down how somebody thinks about and approaches a complex system. It helps you understand what a person is trying to do, and how they think about doing it. Going through a typical day for the Super Mom and plotting down what she’s thinking about and trying to do was the first step.
Next, I said let’s fill in the areas of Super Mom’s day that the first release of Datovo would solve. Since the first release was focusing on business users in a niche market, it was clear that the mobile app would really only be used in a small slice of her day. So we realized that we needed to redefine our app’s target user. It wasn’t Super Mom. It was Ecommerce Manager.
Yuva’s vision is for the app to be a helpful tool for everybody. Through a quick UX exercise, Yuval realized that the reality isn’t there. Yet! I’m looking forward to continuing the process and helping Datovo accomplish its mission – helping everyone overcome information overload.