Our minds look like...

Lauren and decided that, with the categories of Beauty, Style and Technology detailed in the project brief, completing an Affinity diagram (which we generally use to determine categories to focus our research) was unnecessary at this point in the design process.

Instead, we working together to create a Mind Map to explore key words and phrases that we associate with the categories above which represent our current knowledge, assumptions, and questions surrounding the broad problem domain. We also included Fashion, Upper-class, Women (which we identified as a beginning point for narrowing down our target market), Comfort, and Wearables as main branches in the diagram.

Through this exercise, we discovered many non-linear connections between the categories, which enabled us to see the expansiveness of the opportunity. The diagram revealed that in our experience there is often a separation or disconnect between the internal female mind and the external manifestations of that mind. These external manifestations are judged by the female’s peers.

Technology-, wearable-, fashion-, and style-oriented products are all part of this external woman, with comfort firmly rooted in the internal mind. Beauty straddles the division between categories.

We identified that a successful, poetic solution to the design opportunity will satisfy the externally expressed desires of the upper-class woman, while touching the internal needs of her mind.

We also identified that many beauty-oriented products either enhance or are in contrast to the natural state of the user. For example, hair dye either enhances one’s hair in a natural color, or is outside the realm of human hair colors, like bright blue.

Instinct as well as identifying and understanding patterns were identified as important elements in comfort, and have interesting implications for how these women identify and choose whether to accept or reject products, fashions, and styles.