design strategy & inclusivity

Course 4. Thinking Styles

4. Thinking Styles

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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.

Wednesdays at 10:30am San Francisco time

Thursdays at 5:30pm San Francisco time

More about the timezones and dateline

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

Recommended reading

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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:

Group A

10:30am San Francisco time

Group B

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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Group A

10:30am San Francisco time

Group B

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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Group A

10:30am San Francisco time

Group B

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

Choose your group:

Group A

10:30am San Francisco time

Group B

5:30pm San Francisco time

Pricing for Teams

Discounts from the Regular price level are available for groups/teams attending the class together.

Contact us to enroll your team:

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Refund Policy

Refunds are possible up until 2 days prior to your course start date.

Indi teaches you how to conduct your studies and analyze your data so that you're getting to the heart of the users' problems and better understanding their needs.
– anonymous - Apr-2019
Indi's class is extremely well structured and paced very well, with exercises, and she gives you time to think and process what she's explaining.
– anonymous - Apr-2020
TOTALLY WORTH IT FROM MINUTE 1! You can tell Indi is a great listener in her research by the manner in which she speaks in her classes (this might sound counterintuitive, I know).
– anonymous - Apr-2020
You should do the course because it's a unique way to improve your way to uncover what you're missing about your users when you're doing research.
– Miguel Baeza - May-2021
Indi's reduced rate for countries with a big currency value difference is the best example of an inclusive, ethical, and actually just altruistic person - I've never heard or seen this anywhere else.
– anonymous - Apr-2020
If you don’t know which of these classes to start with, try signing up for the course that’s coming up next, which is what I did.
– DJ Heo - May-2020
Indi's lovely and personable nature make her really enjoyable to listen to.
– anonymous - Apr-2020
I hadn't realized how much rich data I've been missing about users just by how personas have been created and used.
– anonymous - Apr-2019
Indi brings so much energy, sheer curiosity to class. By the way, her own war stories are gold!
– DJ Heo - May-2020
Indi’s class allows you to practice research rigor and apply what you learn in a real-world setting.
– DJ Heo - May-2020
I love how tangible and clear Indi made the content. It's the only online course ever that I didn't lose interest in after the first class (or even after 15 minutes sometimes...).
– anonymous - Apr-2020
Each engaged student becomes part of how this fluid process is taught, and how it may be practiced in the future.
– Cindy Lowrey - Apr-2019
You’re probably here because you’re a curious person wanting to learn about doing better research. So just give any of her classes a chance and see how much you grow with it! :)
– DJ Heo - May-2020
It's a better way to look at the people you want to design for, based on real and not made up data.
– Bibiana - Apr-2020
It gives you a good theoretical base of how to build thinking styles from research material
– Tomás Ottolenghi - May-2021
It was great to work with Indi. She is a pioneer in the field of qualitative studies. She also came from a developer background which is useful when you are involved in software projects.
– Dana Lynn - Apr-2019
You walk away learning that questions are a powerful tool of clarity. The skills you’ve just practiced with Indi will guide you to a deeper understanding of people as people, not users.
– DJ Heo - May-2020
A class like this is hard to come by, where you learn tactical tips to do strategic research right.
– DJ Heo - May-2020
Although I was in the 'Follow-Along' (not Live) group, I still feel like I benefitted greatly. (Although I can see the immense value of doing it real time with homework assessments.)
– anonymous - Apr-2020
Just do it
– Yannis Masouras - May-2021
The give-and-take gave me the impression that I was part of something that's still evolving, which is exciting. Those of us applying problem space research to our work are part of the evolution.
– Cindy Lowrey - Apr-2019
I wasn't entirely clear that the courses were sequential, and wished I'd had the analysis coursese under my belt before taking Thinking Styles.
– anonymous - May-2020
Do it! You learn so much in just a few weeks. And though it's online, it's very interactive and personal, not at all like a webinar. And there's homework that Indi actually checks!
– Francesca - Apr-2019
If you want your product research to add meaningful value to people, this course is a must.
– Bertus Kock - May-2021
I would say it's a good alternative to persona usage
– anonymous - May-2020
Go for it. It's all useful and better than the NNG courses I've been on
– Oliver Shreeve - May-2021
The Thinking Styles course was by far the most engaging course I’ve ever taken remotely. You forget it’s entirely taught online.
– DJ Heo - May-2020

Other Languages

Take this course in Chinese through UXOffer:

Previous start dates

12-May-21 | 18-Mar-20 | 24-Apr-19

3. Cultivating Patterns (analysis part two)
4. Thinking Styles
5. Mental Model Diagrams as Opportunity Maps