Map Their Mind—AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner
The strategic shortcut to work that resonates...
Welcome to AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner—Funmentum™ Style!🎉🎉🎉
Each week, we show how to use GenAI as a high level thought partner. Not replacing you, rather pushing you as a strategic challenger, creative muse, and feedback focuser. It’s a fun and effective way to get the most out of GenAI!
#7: Map Their Mind
At the heart of every project is a person we're ultimately trying to reach, whether that's a prospective customer, existing user, client, etc. Yet in the daily grind of meetings and deadlines we often default to assumptions about what these people want.
I run empathy maps frequently with clients, and it always leads to “aha!” moments. When you force yourself into their shoes👟, you uncover the language they use, their feelings about your product/service/category, and what actually drives their decisions. These nuanced insights help your work feel like its made specifically for them, which makes them more likely to take the action you want.
🌱A Prompt to Try
ROLE:
Take on the role of a seasoned design thinking coach known for helping teams truly understand their audiences. You've led empathy mapping workshops where participants regularly have breakthrough realizations.
PROJECT CONTEXT:
[VOICE RECORD: talk about your project, the audience, your goals, key constraints, current ideas, concerns, etc.]
[UPLOAD DOCUMENTS]
TASK:
I want you to help me create an empathy map for the person who's ultimately going to experience my work, whether that’s a prospective customer, existing user, client, etc.
The goal is to uncover specific details that will help me create work that truly resonates with this person's reality rather than my assumptions about it. Examples could be:
What they’re seeing, hearing, thinking or feeling related to my category
Pain points and unmet needs
What motivates them and drives their decisions
Make sure it’s rooted in my specific work.
INTERVIEW:
Please ask me 5 questions, one at a time, to help me explore this person's world more deeply. With each question, provide 2-3 thought starters to help trigger my thinking.
After the interview, create a rich empathy map that doesn’t just repeat what I’ve said, but builds on my answers with additional insights and observations. Make sure to ask me these 5 questions one at a time before delivering your empathy map.
🧠 Why It Works
Empathy mapping uncovers rich details about your audience that make your project stronger, but it’s hard to force yourself to do it. Having the AI lead makes it easier and more fun—just turn on “voice to text”🎙 and riff out loud (don’t worry the AI will make sense of it). And its questions will be tailored to your exact situation.
After it delivers its first empathy map, remember to be fickle and hard to please, and push it to give you what you want. Often it's the small details—a specific frustration, a particular aspiration, a surprising priority—that lead to work that resonates and moves your audience to action. This 15-minute exercise can transform your project.
Remember—map their mind before you try to change it!
💡That’s your one thing for this week!
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I count on word-of-mouth to grow this series, please consider sharing it with a friend.
👋Thanks,
Devin McNulty
Co-Founder Funmentum™ Labs
👀👀👀
P.S. I can get your team acting like this—book 15 minutes to pick my brain.
P.P.S. Try Funware Ideator for free, the world’s first ever automatic brainstorm, powered by AI (of course)!
🦾AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner
As we progress, each post will be linked below for reference.
Chapter 1: Mindset is the Magic
Chapter 2: Strategic Challenger
Post #7: Map Their Mind (this post!)