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T Course 2 ConceptsSummaries

Three types of "jewels" fall out of a transcript, to become summaries

2. Concepts & Summaries

(synthesis part one)

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self-guided recordings include four sections, each with eleven videos, totaling 11 hours. Live Group Meetings include one intro session, and four group meetings each at two hours

Purchase the 2021 Archived Recordings

Bundle Self-Paced Recordings with Live Meetings

About This Course

Prerequisites

Everyone can do this kind of data synthesis. You don’t need any expertise. But you will understand the course better with this background:

  • Either the course Listening Deeply or the book Time to Listen (or the book Practical Empathy, or even the older explanations in Mental Models)
  • Test yourself with this quiz to see if you are ready to take the Concepts & Summaries course
  • Understand the 4 potential layers of a topic, and the 3 concept types in each layer
  • Recognize the 3 interior cognition concept types in communication (inner thinking, emotional reactions, guiding principles)
  • Recognize when a person is generalizing or recounting a particular memory
  • Understand how listening sessions are framed by a person’s purpose

Recommended Background

  • Video: The Person’s Purpose
  • Video: Research Tied to Org’s Goals
  • Video: Thinking Styles Definition
  • Articles about Data Synthesis
  • Articles about Demographic Assumptions

Most teams are under pressure to pull insights from research data. When it comes to research data as transcripts, the pressure becomes tenfold. Managers assume the hard work is already done now that the interviews are over. “Give me the insights already,” they ask. Often, teams are not trained nor given support in handling data. They are told to just “find the affinities.” So, they jump to that.

  • Section 1 – Recognizing Concepts in Transcripts
  • Section 2 – Clarifying the Concept
  • Section 3 – The Format of a Summary
  • Section 4 – Clarifying the Summary

Research teams typically end up doing two steps in one: identify concepts at the same time as seeing what patterns form across transcripts. They use sticky notes to identify 10 or 15 concepts in one transcript and quickly move to the next transcript to see what is familiar. However, in both analysis and in synthesis there are two steps. But teams are expected to do what the manager says, and the manager has a hunger for quick insights. Managers erroneously give the team the imperative to jump to the second pattern-finding step. This mistake reduces good transcript data to ineffectual, “we already know that” takeaways.

Some of the video topics:

  • How people rarely communicate concepts one at a time in a linear fashion
  • Collecting bits of a concept as it is mentioned in different places of the transcript
  • Untangling concepts that are braided together
  • Deciding whether an implied concepts is worth keeping in the data set
  • Summarizing each concept in a manner that makes it easily recalled, and easily compared across transcripts to see patterns
  • (Finding these patterns is the second course of this pair)
  • Recognizing that “insights” must wait until the solutions already in place are compared to the patterns that arise from the data

If the research team does follow the two steps, it becomes an overwhelming task. There is not enough time to carefully identify the 40-120 concepts that appear in each transcript. Their initial thoroughness quickly becomes a little more high-level, a little speedier. This is when assumptions creep in. It takes a well-trained mind not to fall prey to cognitive bias.

When you come at data from a top-down approach, the concepts that you’ve already become interested in get emphasized. Bottom-up synthesis is a method that helps you avoid cognitive bias and let people’s different perspectives get represented their way. It requires keeping a neutral mindset and looking at the transcripts for types of concepts, not concept meaning. The meaning will bias you toward the things you are already interested in. Types of concepts, enables a bit of neutrality. Once you pull those types out and summarize them, you will have a true set of concepts that were actually expressed.

Course Features (for new format in bundle):

  • Videos that don’t require you to look at the screen
  • Exercises with answer sheets
  • Downloadable diagrams
  • Closed captions for each video, along with descriptive transcripts
  • Accessible PDFs
  • Downloadable transcripts
  • Add on Live Group Meetings to do the exercises with Indi
  • Live Group Meetings count toward Certification in Problem Space Research
  • Membership in Indi’s Slack workspace (no time limit)

If you want to bring rock-solid, reliable information to your organization, you need to know how. You need to know how to push back on requests like, “What are the highlights?” “Trends?” “Pain points?” You need to know how to let the data show the variety of people’s real interior cognition. These two courses in data synthesis will give you these skills.

Who is this for?

If you are new to research, this course plus the next course will give you a solid foundation for seeing how patterns arise from the data. It replaces the imperative to just “find affinities.”

If you are an experienced researcher, these two courses will add the craft of synthesis to your skill set. Synthesis allows other people’s perspectives and ideas to take precedence over your own way of making sense of what was said. Synthesis is different than analysis. You might have learned analysis in the university, not knowing there was another method.

If you manage a research team, mentoring people and helping them grow their skillsets is key to your team’s success. Getting a taste of what qualitative data synthesis produces, and how it is used, will give you clarity into what kind of time and resources your team needs for different types of studies.

If you manage a product, inclusivity and reducing harm might be one of the strategic directions you want to follow. If you follow how data synthesis works, its power will actually unlock some of your other strategic directions, such as growing the number of people you support with your solution. You may not need to take these courses, but you need to understand what is going on here, and how it is different than data analysis. Skim through the videos and pick up some clarity, and some inspiration.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: If I have questions about the course content, will Indi answer them for me?

A: Asking a question in the Slack community will give Indi, her team, and many other Slack members a chance to see the question and respond to it.

Q: Do the recordings count toward Indi’s Problem Space Certification Program?

A: Not quite. You will want to bundle the recordings with the Live Meetings to count toward certification.

Other Languages

Take this course in Chinese through UXOffer:

Take this course in Spanish with Bibiana Nunes:

Take this course in Portuguese with Amyris Fernandez:

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