challenge
"A person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."
Dale Carnegie - How to win friends and influence people
A person's name is an entire part of their identity, their individuality. However, memorizing people's names is harder than other kind of words and personal information. However, that's something very important to memorize names. It creates better relationships between people. It highly impacts the way people feel valued and comfortable speaking with someone.
Each time we meet new people, we are confronted with learning new faces and names. Today, we will focus on a specific moment that makes that accuracy essential: When a teacher has to memorize the names of a new promotion. We will find some opportunities to design a solution and help Noa memorize their new students' names as fast as possible.
Let's meet Noa
We will focus on one persona today, Noa. She is a great person, with several professional experiences. For her, human is in the middle of everything. That's why, as a coach and teacher, she loves to know the name of anyone she works with.
Noa's Story
Noa will soon start a new chapter of her life. She will be teaching for 2 semesters at La Sorbonne in Paris. She'll have to meet approximately 150 young adults and adults each semester. One of the most important things for her is to consider each person individually, so she would love to memorize many names.
But how can she remember so many faces and names?
process
What's wrong with memorizing people's names?
"The ability to learn and remember proper names, particularly people's names, is notoriously the most difficult relative to other types of words"
Lise Abrams and Danielle K. Davis - Current Directions in Psychological Science
It's hard to create unlogical connections
Imagine you meet an old man. He has a beautiful white beard. He introduces himself as Mr. Whitebeard.
It will be easy to memorize his name. The connection between his name and his person is logical to your brain.
You only have to think about what you see and your mind will bring you the corresponding word.
But in reality, it's hard to memorize a name because there are absolutely no logical connections between a name and a face. That's the first reason why this is so hard to remind someone's name. Moreover, most of the time, you already know other persons with the same name, and it makes nothing easier. Sorry Carlos.
It's hard to focus
That's what psychologists call "the next-in-line effect".
You are meeting new people, Carlos is part of them. But while you shake his hand, you think about something else. "How do I introduce myself?", "how much time does it ask to have that beard?" , etc. That's a classic story, the main reason we don't retain names is that we are actually disturbed by internal and external factors of distraction.
The lack of will
The brain doesn't have to do a lot of effort when you really want to know the name of someone.
If not, you'll retain information like, this person's favorite sport, his job, because the connection is easy. This is called "the baker effect"
USER RESEARCH
Exploring Opportunities
Based on our research, to help people learn names faster, I need to:
Help them focus on a task
Assist users in creating connections between names and faces
Provide tips and best practices
I have several questions I'd like to answer during an exercise:
Is it enough to help users focus in order to memorize names?
Is there a difference between memorizing first names versus full names?
I have two primary goals:
Understand how people create connections between names and faces.
Enable them to learn 18 names as quickly as possible.
Why 18 Names?
Our persona, Noa, will be interacting with 150 people. However, studies show that it’s easier to memorize large amounts of information by dividing it into smaller chunks. This approach not only improves retention but also ensures that the user receives regular encouragement throughout the learning process.
User Research Process
I conducted a five-step test from which we gathered valuable insights.
The Support Material
Our support material is quite simple: a list of 18 faces, both women and men, printed on a piece of paper.
The first two lines are hidden by post-its, with the person's name on them.
To understand the impact of seeing the name before the face, the third line has no post-it at the beginning of the exercise.
To determine if the participants can memorize the last names as well, the second line includes both first and last names.
1. Names and Faces
First, we asked the user to point to a name with their finger. Then, they had to read the name. When they were ready, the post-it was completely removed.
We repeated this operation for the first "box" of 6 names (Melanie, Thomas, Thibault, George Powell, Karim Mechoud, Karine Lampard). Each time, a small quiz was conducted. Result: Most users easily recalled 6/6 names (and surnames), with the worst result being 4/6 names.
2. Names, Faces, and Connections!
This time, once the post-it was removed, the user was invited to draw something on the picture. This way, they created a link between the name and the face.
Studies show the best way to remember a name is to create a connection between the name and the face. This mnemonic approach is effective as it requires the user to imagine a way to see the name on the face.
Result: For our 5 interviewees, the success rate was 6/6.
For instance, one interviewee decided to draw a mustache on one of the women, Renee, because he thought it was the name of his grandfather and he had a mustache.
3. Pictures + Names + Connections!
The exercise was the opposite of the ones we've done so far. The user looked at the face, but each time a post-it was added. For the last three, the user was invited to draw something on the picture to help create a link between the name and the face.
Result: It was difficult for all interviewees to memorize the first two names.
4. Full Test time!
At the end, a full quiz was conducted with all the faces. On the right, you can see a mapping of the average results:
Green for: Name given correctly.
Red for: Forgotten name.
We didn't run enough tests to give relevant percentages, but we observed some tendencies:
100% of the "connected" names were still remembered.
Names and last names were still remembered for faces with both pieces of information.
The last line was harder to learn than the first ones, possibly because the effort is higher at the beginning of the exercise.
Connections Everywhere
Then, I allowed the interviewees to find and draw a connection on each face. Sometimes they needed our help to understand how to do it. For example, "Do you know another person with that name? Ok, try to draw something on her that makes you think of that person too." It was surprising to see people who are not typically creative find really good ideas. Some results were incredible. Here's my favorite one: for "Karine," the user drew a steering wheel to represent "Car In."
Between ten and twenty minutes after the beginning of the exercise, we proposed an ultimate quiz. In this quiz, the faces were not displayed in the same order, to ensure the user wasn't just memorizing a list but creating links with faces. Seeing the results, we also conducted the test with the interviewees one hour after the first test, and the results were the same.
One interesting finding is that we confirmed the theory about the link needed between face and name. We also observed that drawing is a great way for users to create links.
The first question of the interview was: How much time would you need to remember 18 faces and names? Answers ranged from "an afternoon" to "two weeks," with all our users overestimating the effort. They were able to do it in approximately 14 minutes.
WIREFRAMING
Insights from user research
Through our user test, we defined a way to help people create fast connections between names and faces. In essence, we validated (at our level) the work of Gary Small, UCLA Professor of Psychiatry and director of UCLA's Memory and Aging Research Center. His method: Look at the name - Snap the face - Connect them, will be at the core of our product.
Mobile application focus
We identified the opportunity to develop a mobile application to ensure our users focus on one task, one screen at a time. This approach simplifies the user experience and enhances learning efficiency.
User journey breakdown
We will define the application based on different parts of the user journey:
Before meeting students
The D-Day
After meeting students
Our current focus is on the first part. Here is a summarized view of the interface:
Initial interface design
We quickly sketched out a concept for the Welcome page. When Noa first enters the app, she provides her credentials (possibly given by the university). Following this, there is a four-step onboarding process explaining how she will learn with the app. Our focus is on this learning phase, and we do not discuss the various quizzes/tests at this stage.
This streamlined onboarding ensures that Noa understands how to effectively use the app to memorize names and faces, setting her up for success in her interactions with students.
PROTOTYPE
This high fidelity mockup captures the essence of my design philosophy, focusing on simplicity, usability, and effectiveness in helping users create fast and lasting connections between names and faces. I believe this design will greatly enhance Noa's ability to remember and interact with her students. And not only, as I imagined how we could scale our learnings to other applications, and what could be the business model behind it.