Articles & Featured Voices
Trending Essays on Inclusive Software
Your Org’s Strategic Direction Is Based on Research
This article was written in conjunction with Kunyi Mangalam.
May 22, 2023 / Read More
Archetypes Don’t Have Photos, but Characters Do
Develop a cast of characters that represent archetypes you want to support
May 05, 2023 / Read More
Insta-Personas & Synthetic Users
The ways you cannot use ChatGPT (etc) for Design Research
Apr 20, 2023 / Read More
Time to Listen — Chapter One (excerpt)
This is an excerpt from chapter one of my book “Time to Listen.” You can read more about the book and order the book through your local b...
Mar 03, 2022 / Read More
A Powerful Lens: People’s Purpose
Sep-2022: The book Time to Listen is available now. Chapter 4 shows you how to set the purpose of a listening session or a study about th...
Jan 30, 2021 / Read More
A Team that Is Switched On
what does non-hierarchical collaboration look like?
Sep 25, 2020 / Read More
How to Wield Empathy
This is what I mean by empathy. I tried thinking like Daren would think.
Aug 25, 2020 / Read More
Generating Focused Ideas Through Practical Empathy
Building awareness of cognitive bias, and solving for it with thinking styles and problem space research
Aug 24, 2020 / Read More
Remote Collaboration Tips
Time travel with me back to 2003, and discover the through-line.
Aug 24, 2020 / Read More
Published Articles
Removing Bias from Your Solutions
Jan-2021 – User Research Explained, A Charity Collection of Essays for Pandemic Relief;
When You Listen, What Are You Thinking
Nov-2019 – Design Management Institute dmi:Review “Innovative Thinking on Diversity & Inclusion,” Vol. 30, Issue 3, November 2019, page 22;
Intelligence vs. Understanding
Sept-2008- Scroll Magazine, inaugural edition, September 2008 (the magazine ended soon after, and was never available online)
Contributions
3 Ways to Select the Perfect Method for your Research Goal
Dec-2014 – UXmas – Advent Calendar for UX folk
Comics
Developing valid personas
Created by Indi Young & Brad Colbow
This comic introduces the basics of creating behavioral audience segments. The examples shown in this comic are labeled as roles by accident, so ignore that. .
Mental Model Diagrams Cartoon
Created by Indi Young & Brad Colbow
Designers focus on the details of experiences–flow, layout, connection to other channels, tone of voice, etc. The goal is to be as “user-aware” as possible, yet there are different kinds of users. How can you support them more completely? For that matter, how can you support even one segment of users in a manner that aligns with their inner thinking?
Featured Voices
Why Listening Deeply is so hard
by Pei Ling Chin
Listening deeply is a topic I am passionate about, not because I am good at it (far from it!) but because it is so deeply needed – not just in research but in our everyday conversations with people.
Empathy Map: A Tool To Uncover What REALLY Matters
by Zulaikha
Empathy is the key trait that helps us keep people at the center of everything we do. However, people are complex, and that makes it impossible to empathize at scale. Empathetic frameworks help navigate that complexity.