Extremes and Mainstreams

Early on in the semester, our team used an additional design method called “Extremes and Mainstreams” to think about the different categories of users of EcoRise. This method allowed us to place different types of users into buckets from within their already existing categories as stakeholders (i.e. students, teachers, and professionals.) The concept behind extremes and mainstreams is pretty straightforward. Essentially, users of a product or service and their interaction with said product or service form a bell curve when plotted on a graph. There is a small percentage of users on either side of the curve that represents a fraction of users that interact in a particular way with the product or service. Because there are so few of these users and they lie on either end of the curve, we refer to them as extreme users. The vast majority of users fall into the middle of the curve, which is classified as the mainstream category. To better visualize this trend, the graph below depicts this distribution of users.

There are many advantages to using this design method. In the case of our group, we were empowered to think critically about what it meant for there to be “extreme” users of EcoRise. This level of analysis helps when looking for stakeholders to interview. Another way to use this tool is after interviewing your stakeholders because it is worthwhile to evaluate what category each user belongs to. Knowing what kind of users your stakeholders are can help you take certain anecdotes with a grain of salt as they may not be representative of the majority of users. However, there are disadvantages to Extremes and Mainstreams, like oversimplifying your users, or even assuming that extreme users exist in the first place. This is not a one size fits all method, and it is important to know if the method works for your own design problem.

The way my team used this method was by separating the three user categories that interact with EcoRise: students, teachers, and professionals. Under a graph of a bell curve, we inserted sticky notes with phrases or characteristics that would belong to the users at each point of the curve. This was a good team alignment activity when looking for stakeholders to interview, and doing this activity really made us think about the kinds of users that would gain the most out of a program like EcoRise. Additionally, a goal of ours that we tried to hit on with our solution to the design problem was to make more of the users on the left end of the bell curve become more like the users at the right end (i.e. more passionate about sustainability.)

I recommend using this method when in the empathize phase of a project. At that point in a project, everything is still fairly new, and it is important to familiarize yourself with the stakeholders associated with your design problem. Extremes and Mainstreams is a wonderful way to see the scope of users as well as behaviors associated with users marked as the majority and those marked as outliers.