
3. Cultivate Emergent Patterns
data synthesis for everyone
part two
Cultivate Emergent Patterns
Self-paced Course
(data synthesis for everyone, part 2) Learn how to find affinities based on intent (focus of mental attention) rather than nouns. Concept summaries are the puzzle pieces.
- 25 videos, in 4 sections
- Section 1 & 2 videos now available. Indi expects to roll out Sections 3 & 4 before Sep 2023
- Total video time: 8 hours
- Demos and examples
- Exercises & quizzes
- Closed captions
- Listen w/ or w/out the screen
Length of Access:
6 Months
About This Course
Prerequisites
- Course – Concepts & Summaries (data synthesis part one)
Recommended Knowledge
- Articles about Data Synthesis
- Chapter 6 in Practical Empathy
- Articles about Demographic Assumptions
Summary
Typical affinity grouping involves sticky notes and intuitive understanding of how concepts fit together. Bias creeps in. This course covers a more accurate method.
Make sure your qualitative data synthesis lets other perspectives appear.
Product design is full of decisions. Smart organizations base those decisions on an equal combination of quantitative & qualitative research. Qualitative research seems to be the poor cousin with respect to following an accurate process. We rely on an incomplete picture. For example, folks who grew up with the kids TV show Sesame Street, remember a game called “one of these things is not like the others.” One of the muppet characters would put pictures of four things up on a board, and the other muppets would guess which one was “unlike” the other based on various facets. When I was a kid, the show producers always made the game end with one correct answer. Society now has a better understanding that there can be different answers based on different perspectives.
What doesn’t belong if the four things are:
- cleats
- sports shorts
- sports socks
- sports headphones
It depends upon context. If you are training for a marathon, then the sports shorts, socks, and headphones might go together. If you’re at practice for your football/soccer team, then the shorts, socks, and cleats might go together. There are other contexts, too. And there are different ways you’d achieve the purpose of marathon training or football/soccer practice based on your physiology, which would require different equipment than these four things.
Improve your skill at finding affinities from different perspectives.
One place practitioners go wrong is choosing noun-based affinities. In this course you will learn how to find affinities based on verbs–the action within the context. Synthesis of the concept summaries (from the previous course) across study participants is based on similarity between their states of mind when they thought or felt the concept. This is how you avoid unconscious bias. This is how you allow the data to group together from the bottom-up.
You will learn how to:
- Cultivate patterns based on focus of mental attention
- Avoid cognitive & unconscious bias by avoiding nouns
- Pinpoint the action with in the context
- Feel confident with the groups that you find
- Validate the integrity of your data by whether or not the patterns arise
Course Features (for new format in bundle):
- Videos that don’t require you to look at the screen
- Exercises with answer sheets
- Downloadable hand outs
- Closed captions for each video, along with descriptive transcripts
- Accessible PDFs
- Downloadable transcripts
- Membership in Indi’s Slack workspace (no time limit)
Who is this for?
See the Concepts & Summaries “Who is this for?” section for details.
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 qualify me for Indi’s Problem Space Certification Program?
A: Not quite. You will also want to join the Live Practice series for each course. In these Live Practice meetings, you get to work on exercises together with Indi and others. This is where we discuss nuances of context and share experiences that help others prepare to conduct their own research. Live Practice meetings give you a chance to double your knowledge and demonstrate your understanding.
Other Languages
Take this course in Chinese through UXOffer: