Read about Data Science that Listens

Below you can find Indi’s articles, as well as many works contributed by other researchers, strategists, and product folks from around the globe. See the Featured Voices section for collected, unsolicited articles about the method.

Published Papers

blue background with cloud and a part scene, with a yellow paper airplane looping through upper right corner with white dotted line showing its path

ASEE: Rigorous Qualitative Human-Centered Methods to Inform Criteria for Broadening Participation in Institutions and Organizations

Jennifer Strickland

MITRE

In this paper I examine the use of qualitative, human-centered methods for public policy processes to broaden participation in institutions and organizations, so they can deliver engineering solutions that serve all of humanity.

Harness Mental Models to Create Strategic Alignment

Joana de Quintanilha

A Forrester Trend Report by Joana de Quintanilha (requires an org-level subscription; ask around your org to see if you have access)

JMIR: The Effect of Online Chronic Disease Personas on Activation

Catherine Devany Serio, Author Orcid, Jason Hessing, Becky Reed, Christopher Hess, Janet Reis

Healthwise

Engaging patients and increasing activation for self-care using online tools has proven difficult. Designing more tailored interventions through the application of condition-specific personas may be a way to increase engagement and patient activation.

Chronic Disease Patient Personas

Tanya Shah, Meredith Brown, Becky Reed, Jason Hessing, Christine Maldonado

Healthwise

Three different sets of thinking styles for people living with chronic conditions.

Hiring People with Disabilities

Indi Young

Cornell University ILR School

Changing employers’ perceptions and behaviors around hiring and retaining individuals with disabilities.

PDF

Conference Posters

Mitre Corporation blue digital globe background with these words in white font: Rigorous human-centered methodologies foster robust and collaborative environments, policies, and services.

SWS Poster: Policy Design to Encourage STEM in Agencies

Jennifer Strickland

MITRE

The 2022 CHIPS & Science Act mandates measurement of agencies’ ability to attract and retain a diverse and non-traditional population in STEM.

card image for this example, showing text that says "different people, same purpose, different styles ... Lose Weight ... Context can influence people's Thinking Style and how they approach achieving a goal." There are colorful circles representing four different contexts, with some illustrations of people in those contexts. Notice my kids are adoption my habits. My health record notes "underlying condition." Upcoming job interview. Training for a hiking trip in 5 months."

Poster for 2022 IA Summit

Kunyi Mangalam, Elizabeth Thapliyal, Bibiana Nunes, Indi Young

IndiYoung.com

Attract and retain a diverse and non-traditional population in STEM.

Image

snippet of the poster showing "discover paths" and "identify the right path"

Poster for 2018 IA Summit

Elizabeth Thapliyal, Ryan Kasper, Jennifer Padilla

Citrix

The design team found several directions to go based on the mental model skyline. The manager wanted proof, in quant data.

Featured Voices

Enhancing Usability Testing

24-Jun-24, Lisa Dance

Use frameworks to have a more systematic approach for identifying and mitigating potential harms.

The Most Important Skill

3-Jun-24, Miguel Baeza

Once upon a time, there was a young guy who wanted to work in UX Research, but wasn’t sure how to make it happen. He went to talk to an old Researcher and he asked...

Why Listening Deeply is so Hard

14-Apr-21, Pei Ling Chin

Listening deeply is a topic I am passionate about, not because I am good at it (far from it!) but because it is so deeply needed – not just in research but in our everyday conversations with people.

A Path to Empathy: Ask foundational questions to unveil the lived experience

18-Jun-20, Weidan Li, PhD

Anthropologists study a group of humans and their social structures to gain cultural knowledge to inform the future development, which requires...

Deep Listening in Coaching Mentees

Pei Ling Chin

Before I could listen deeply to my mentees, I need to assess how I currently listen. Surely we know how to listen. But do we, really? I discovered during and after this talk that a lot of team issues can be resolved if only teams learn to develop empathy, and empathy can only be developed through listening deeply.

mental model diagram with stickies beneath towers

PART 1: Designing With Mental Models

Tiago Camacho

SEEK

The design team at SEEK wanted to see how all their research comes together to tell a clear story, in a way that teams to add their learnings on top of existing ones in a structured and straightforward way.

PART 2: Building Mental Model Diagrams

Tiago Camacho

SEEK

In our previous article, we introduced mental model diagrams, some of the theory behind them, and the kind of value we believe they offer organisations. In this more hands-on article, we’ll take you through our process of collaboratively building a comprehensive mental model diagram. We share what worked well and what needed to be adapted to the systems in place.

Finding a Pet to Adopt

Katherine Kendall

Petfinder

For a planned site redesign, our team, including an external creative agency, needed a detailed understanding of the pet adoption journey from pet owners' perspectives.

How listening deeply can transform you into a better leader, designer, researcher and team member

Pei Ling Chin

Six improvements, including understanding my mentees better so I can tailor a mentoring program for them.

Indi's Recent Newsletter Essays

Guardrailing AI Outputs

via Thinking Style of your specific users

I Trained It to Copy Your Style

Categories for how we use AI

“Liberating, Terrifying, Humanizing”

Listening deeply empowers your team to support more thinking styles

Fresh Starts — Not Everyone Wants Them

Both Solar and Lunar New Year have traditions around cleaning up and making a fresh start. Not everyone is into…

Disrupting Idea-Generation

There’s a phrase to help drivers remember that signal lights are for moving through town together. “Yellow, mellow, next time…

Deeper Than Demographics & Roles

We all make assumptions about others. It’s part of how our pattern-recognizing brains work. We see a pattern — then…

Indi's Published Articles

Removing Bias from Your Solutions

Jan-2021

User Research Explained, A Charity Collection of Essays for Pandemic Relief;

When You Listen, What Are You Thinking?

Nov-2019

Design Management Institute dmi:Review “Innovative Thinking on Diversity & Inclusion,” Vol. 30, Issue 3, November 2019, page 22;

PDF

Launching Problem Space Research

Jan-2018

Interactions Jan-Feb 2018 XXV.1, page 66;

PDF

Product Strategy: Clinging to Assumptions

Jan-2016

Interactions May-June 2016 XXIII.3, page 66;

PDF

Look at It Another Way

Sep-2008

A List Apart, issue 267, September 09, 2008

Photo of Scroll Magazine cover, first issue. A cartoon cloud is asking a cartoon bird, "Did you get my email?" and the bird relies "Yes."

Intelligence vs. Understanding

Sep-2008

Scroll Magazine, inaugural edition, September 2008 (the magazine ended soon after, and was never available online)

PDF

3 Ways to Select the Perfect Method for your Research Goal

Dec-2014

UXmas - Advent Calendar for UX folk

The Squabble Over Personas

Dec-2013

UXmas - Advent Calendar for UX folk;

blue image on cover of book, looking like plans for a rocket ship and how it will be used

UX Design for Startups - Foreword by Indi Young

Jan-2013

UX Design for Startups by Marcin Treder;

PDF

Comics as Explainers

First page of comic: Help My Parent Recover - Day 1 (Thinking style: Give Dignity & Agency) Your parent had an event (surgery, accident) rendering them temporarily unable to walk. A thinking style is your approach to your purpose. At first your thinking style as a caretaker is to support your parent as the person they really are, not treat them like an invalid. (You don't even like that word.) You make sure they have a say in everything you help them with. The comic frames depict the caretaker getting instructions from the doctor, taking their mom home, and putting on some music for her because she asked. Seeing that Mom looks depressed, the caretaker suggests calling Tio Tico, who relates a story about when Mom was 6 and had a bad reaction to a pain reliever when she broke her arm. The caretaker calls the doctor in concern, who suggests switching to another pain reliever. The caretaker feels better about giving Mom the other pain reliever.

Thinking Styles Caretaker Comics

A person might address their goal or intention with different thinking styles in different contexts.

For example, if you are taking care of your parent while they temporarily cannot walk, you may shift through several thinking styles across the course of many weeks.

Developing Valid Personas

Created by Indi Young & Brad Colbow

This comic introduces the basics of creating behavioral audience segments. The examples shown in this comic are labeled as roles by accident, so ignore that.

Mental Model Diagrams Cartoon

Created by Indi Young & Brad Colbow

In this comic, Indi and Brad introduce mental model diagrams to us and how we can use them to build better websites.