3. Cultivate Emergent Patterns

data synthesis for everyone
part two

About This Course

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:

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)

Combined with part one of qualitative data synthesis, this course will give you the skills needed for accurate pattern synthesis.

Feel more confident in your qual skills by learning how do to do bottom up analysis. You will learn to conduct inclusive research (minimize biases), and you will see your shorter, one-time research...

– Julia Cowing - Mar-2021

It's the only advanced user research analysis course you can find online.

– Gosia - Feb-2019

This will validate you if you are interested in problem space research.

– anonymous - Feb-2020

Go for it!! The material is really rich and you are able to directly use all the things you learned from this course

– anonymous - Feb-2019

If you think you are already good at qualitative research / problem space research, think again.

– Yan Huang - Feb-2020

Even if you've been a ux research practitioner for long, this course will show you how to let data speak for itself and how to group findings without bias.

– Augusto Bianchi - Mar-2021

It helps you add a layer of analysis to the clustering of learnings from interviews or other listening techniques, focused on avoiding biases

– Tomás Ottolenghi - Mar-2021

The best part is the weekly homework, which reinforces learning and gives you a taste of how to put news skills/knowledge to practice.

– Gosia - Feb-2019

I have gained a lot of wisdom not just professionally, but personally as well.

– Yan Huang - Feb-2020

Great course! The small group means intimate setting in learning. Indi's experience both teaching and practicing shows. The care put into the content is evident. The depth and nuance is unparalleled.

– Yan Huang - Feb-2020

The format is very engaging. You have weekly meetings in a small group where Indi teaches new concepts through a short lecture and hands-on activities.

– Gosia - Feb-2019

Indi’s course had an immediate impact on my skillset. I left the class a noticeably improved researcher!

– Josh Rosenberg - Feb-2020, DonorsChoose.org

I wish I would have discovered these courses earlier in my career. I will probably keep coming back to listen. Our minds are tricky pesky monster to train.

– Mo Goltz - Feb-2020

I would highly recommend Indi Young's work, and her video training makes concepts she writes about come alive and easier to grasp.

– Mo Goltz - Feb-2020

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: