design strategy & inclusivity

Course 4. Thinking Styles

4. Thinking Styles

    About this course

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    About this course

    Start date: 5-May-21

    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

    Who is this for?

    Product owners, entrepreneurs, enterprise leaders, designers, developers, content strategists, researchers … we all need a tool to help us systematically uncover the harm we are causing. Thinking styles is this tool.

    Learn how to launch at your organization a more humane method of representing the people you hope to support.

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    Prerequisites

    • read the essay Describing Personas
    • understanding of listening
    • understanding of listening sessions for data collection

    Recommended reading

    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
    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 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 brings so much energy, sheer curiosity to class. By the way, her own war stories are gold!
    – DJ Heo - May-2020
    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
    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
    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
    A class like this is hard to come by, where you learn tactical tips to do strategic research right.
    – DJ Heo - May-2020
    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
    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
    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
    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
    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
    I would say it's a good alternative to persona usage
    – anonymous - May-2020
    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
    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
    Indi’s class allows you to practice research rigor and apply what you learn in a real-world setting.
    – DJ Heo - May-2020
    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
    Indi's lovely and personable nature make her really enjoyable to listen to.
    – anonymous - Apr-2020
    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
    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

    How does it work?

    Duration

    4 classes of 2 hours each. The live version of a course takes about four weeks to complete.

    Time Zones

    Live courses are taught Wed 10:30am or Friday 5:30pm San Francisco time. here are two helpful tools: 1. Time zone converter 2. Explore your time zone

    Homework Review

    Students who enroll for the live version of the courses will have Indi review their homework.

    Pricing

    Several pricing tiers aim to support different budgets and currency rates.

    Enrollment options

    3 enrollment options give you the choice as to how to complete the course.

    Previous start dates

    18-Mar-20;24-Apr-19

    More courses

    4. Cultivating Patterns (analysis part two)

    Next date: 24-Mar-2021

    5. Thinking Styles
    6. Mental Model Diagrams as Opportunity Maps

    Next date: 16-Jun-2021

    Pricing & enrollment options

    Enrollment options

    For each course you can enroll in one of the three ways

    Live Online Courses

    Join a class of 25 or less participants, from around the globe. Classes are taught online live by Indi.

    • Live discussions & questions during classes
    • Access to slack community
    • Access to recordings of the course
    • Recordings available for 3 months
    • Homework review of your work by Indi & assistant
    • Partner for homework with others in your group

    Follow-along Option

    If you cannot attend class, but still want to follow along with the latest course as it is taught, this is a great option for you.

    • Access to slack community
    • Access to recordings of the currently underway live course
    • Recordings available for 6 weeks (motivation to finish!)
    • Homework, but no homework review
    • Partner for homework with others currently following-along
    Archived Access

    If the course you are interested in is not coming up any time soon, this is an option to provide you access to the recordings of the course when it was taught for the last time.

    • Access to slack community
    • Access to recordings of the last time this course was taught
    • Recordings available for 6 months
    • Homework, but no homework review

    Looking to sign up your team? Contact us about team discounts

    Price levels for individuals

    Price LevelLive Online CoursesFollow-Along OptionArchived Footage
    RegularUS $776US $194US $194
    Out-of-pocketUS $388US $194US $194
    Government & militaryUS $582US $145US $145
    Extreme currency exchange*
    (e.g. Brazil, Ukraine, India)    		US $80US $40US $40

    Regular price – when your organization will cover the cost
    Out-of-pocket – when you will NOT be reimbursed for the cost
    Government & military – when you are a government employee , active service member, or veteran
    *Extreme currency exchange – when your currency exchange rate is at an extreme difference with the US dollar (your payment must come from an account in a country with a big rate difference, e.g. Brazil, India, Ukraine, Russia, Malaysia …)

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    Refund Policy

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

    Team Discounts

    If you have a team of three, four, five, on up to 20, there are discounts!

    Contact us about team discounts.