
4. Thinking Styles
Recorded Lectures + Live Group Sessions
Visit the page at this link to purchase only the recorded lectures for this course.
NOTE: The dates below are estimates and may change.

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About this course
Summary
Thinking styles are deeply-researched, demographics-free mindsets. They are much more reliable and flexible than demographic & psychographic descriptions of sets of people.
Segmenting your audience by demographics invites bias and discrimination.
A well-researched persona is a good tool to guide your strategy and scenario-writing. But often personas are built in a day using quantitative data and invented “decorative” detail. When teams accept the convention of using names, faces, and ages in their personas, it allows cognitive bias to creep in. Demographic assumptions are harmful. This demographic approach to personas ends up as an unusable mashup of target market description and product design guidance. It frequently only addresses the buying behavior. If a set of personas does venture past buying into usage, they usually represent only one philosophical approach to users’ overall purpose. This one philosophical approach is duplicated with different “skins” to show “diversity.”
Thinking styles are a better way to support a broad diversity of people.
Thinking styles represent patterns of inner thinking, emotional reactions, and guiding principles derived from listening sessions. They’re archetypes. You use them in gap analysis to see where your solutions offer weak support for certain thinking styles. You use them for the characters who play roles in an org’s design scenarios: buying, on-boarding, usage, workarounds, retention. With a connection to the inner mindsets people have as they seek to achieve their own purposes, your team will become aware of broader cultures and philosophies. This variety allows your organization to multiply the number of goals and solutions you can seek to support.
You will learn how to:
- Practice the neutral mindset of understanding people as people
- Derive thinking styles from research
- Provide the core concepts at depth that differentiate thinking styles
- Represent complex sets of thinking styles in a way many teams across a large org can easily use
- Convert existing personas to thinking-styles
- Gather core concepts from existing research
- Stop writing repetitive (and useless) scenarios
- Give you org a clear path to address discrimination and support different physiology
Course Features:
- Downloadable diagrams & learning tools
- Exercises and practice during the live group sessions
- Counts toward Certficate of Problem Space Research
- Slack workspace membership
Prerequisites
- Recognition of the difference between concepts at surface vs. depth
- Understanding that concepts at depth represent cognitive empathy (inner thinking, emotional reactions, guiding principles)
- How to conduct listening sessions for data collection
- Writing summaries of concepts at depth using the formula: verb + key point + supporting details
- Watch one of Indi’s latest recorded talks
- Listen to one of the latest Other Recordings
Recommended reading
- Articles about Thinking Styles
- Pages 116-119 in Practical Empathy
- Articles about Demographic Assumptions
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Recordings + Live Group Sessions
Group A: 20 places left
Group B: 20 places left
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Regular
When your organization will cover the cost, e.g. your employer is paying
Price per individual: US $776.00
Choose your group:
10:30am San Francisco time
5:30pm San Francisco time
Govt / Military / Non-profit
When a government, military, or non-profit organization is covering the cost
Price per individual: US $582.00
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10:30am San Francisco time
5:30pm San Francisco time
Out-of-Pocket
When you will NOT be reimbursed for the cost by anyone
Price per individual: US $388.00
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5:30pm San Francisco time
Extreme Currency Exchange
When you pay from a country with an extreme conversion rate to US$, e.g. Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Peru, Serbia, Ukraine
Price per individual: US $80.00
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10:30am San Francisco time
5:30pm San Francisco time
Pricing for Teams
Discounts from the Regular price level are available for groups/teams attending the class together.
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Refund Policy
Refunds are possible up until 2 days prior to your course start date.