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Data science that listens

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Strategy

Structure and clarity for your strategic decisions

The goals of your organization and your customers may not be aligned. If you offer an inadequate solution, people fail. Society fails. How people think, feel, and make decisions is your window into their goals.

Align your goals with people’s cognition, and everyone can succeed.

Learn about Data Science That Listens

1. Stabilize your strategy

People’s cognition changes slowly. A mental model skyline means your decisions will always be on solid ground.

  • The problem space prioritizes people’s cognition and goals (rather than your solutions) as a framework.
  • This means your strategy space can include more thinking styles with less cognitive bias, providing stakeholders with empiric qual data science.
  • And your solution space will blossom with creativity, variety, and solid tracking .

Qual data science like this an investment that pays back year after year.

See how orgs benefit over time

2. Measure value to people

A mental model skyline accurately tracks the value you provide to people.

  • Use familiar evaluative studies, but framed by skyline tower and recruited by thinking style.
  • Watch spark lines lift over time as your solutions improve.
  • See surprising opportunities to help people do things their way.

Strategy is about people.

Focus your org on value
a round, thick disk with cracks in it. Some people are on the top surface of the disk and look happy. Others are stuck in the cracks, with question marks, exclamations, and efforts to pull themselves up to the top surface. The text reads Our Market, Our Employees, Our Citizens. These are the three general areas (business, within orgs, or government) where this method is applied. (Universities & healthcare are kind of lumped in with Our Market.)

3. Recognize missing audiences

a round, thick disk with cracks in it. Some people are on the top surface of the disk and look happy. Others are stuck in the cracks, with question marks, exclamations, and efforts to pull themselves up to the top surface. The text reads Our Market, Our Employees, Our Citizens. These are the three general areas (business, within orgs, or government) where this method is applied. (Universities & healthcare are kind of lumped in with Our Market.)

Strategy defined by demographic assumptions pushes most people into cracks. Build for the variety of hidden patterns of thinking styles.

  • Roles describe process, not people.
  • Stop using generalizing narratives.
  • Cognitive empathy is scalable (where emotional empathy is 1-to-1).

The average user is a myth.

De-couple demographics to boost growth

4. Innovate in the gaps

Innovation focused on people is rare because orgs find it easier to innovate by technology.

  • Structure your innovation work in the skyline gaps
  • Find a whole new path your competition hasn’t even looked for.
  • Build technology that supports people’s cognition.

Do something very different. There is power in that.

Experiment in abundance

5. Support more thinking styles

We can finally do it! We can support more people’s intents and approaches with designed solutions. And ask AI to recognize who is after what, cognitively, and guide them there.

Data Science That Listens provides the foundation for adaptive experiences that are deeply nuanced to the people you intend to serve.

AI won’t replace listening deeply and it won’t replace strategic thinking. But it will help us achieve guide people to solutions that match their thinking style.

Build for human variety

6. Strengthen current methods

Elevate outcomes of the framework you already use with components of Data Science That Listens. It plays well with others.

Jobs To Be Done
(Tony Ulwick)

Empathy Mapping

two ovals that overlap. The first oval contains doodles of numbers. The second oval (yellow) contains doodles of thoughts, emotions, and personal rules. The place where they overlap contains a light bulb to signify insights.

Tie Quant to a Qual Structure

Behavioral Science Frameworks
(Robert Meza)

Design Thinking

Continuous Discovery
(Teresa Torres)

Adapt it to fit your processes

7. See work fitting together

Innovation is not the work of a single genius, but of a team.

Catalyze your collaboration with a common understanding of how things fit together from a customer point of view.

The mental model skyline holds layers and layers of your data, structured by cognition.

See the whole picture together

Testimonials

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While designing software for professional tax preparers I used a number of UX methods, but none helped me more than Mental Modeling. The internal engineering team had lots of ambiguity around how to approach the many problems to solve. Consulting government SMEs clarified how they saw their work and the design process for us.

Ben Judy

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Mental model skylines fill a giant gap. It’s easy to jump right to designing a solution when a need is found. Instead, by focusing on interior cognition and purpose the team can design the solution in abstract of its implementation. Beginning with mental models fosters incremental change and establishes a benchmark to measure against.

Michael Kennedy

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We made a process for learning design that incorporates experience design. Most educational organisations are stuck using bureacratic processes meant for compliance. These days, learning crosses face-to-face and digital, centering around mobile phones. To see where we could add most value, we built a mental model, mapping the work of learning designers against supports we could put in place.

Joyce Seitzinger

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Huge benefit to learning this method: a consistent approach, from recruiting to coding, to ensure you get empirical qualitative data.

Kristi Leach

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The most attractive thing about this knowledge repository is that it’s not at the solution level. Many teams can use it. Unlike scenarios and research notes, it’s way more organized. It’s a visual way to see the whole picture in the data. We can grow it over time, and keep track of our innovation space.

Liya Zheng

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The frameworks Indi teaches are truly remarkable. While there may be initial resistance from some managers, I believe that over time your methodologies will become standard practice in every product design process.

Alla Seleznova

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Mental model diagrams are a quicker path to team building and team alignment.

Becky Reed

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I came back from vacation to discover our team had presented a draft redesign to stakeholders, who were less than pleased. So we used mental models to understand each stakeholder’s concerns, context, and lens. The effect this had was amazing. The resulting presentation was so well-received we were asked to give it to the executive team. My team has used this approach over and over since.

Tara Schnaible

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We used mental models to determine how to categorise the vast amounts of information needed by residents, business owners, and visitors. One of the challenging issues was where to show what to do with a dead animal found on one’s lawn. We followed their mental model. Pets (dogs, cats) were part of Home section, while wild animals (raccoons, squirrels) went in the Parks section.

Rahel Bailie

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I was designing for dispatchers of windmill mechanics. The existing dispatch system could cover huge geographical areas, but it didn’t take into account the pure stress of 12 hour shifts and working with high voltage high above the ground. The listening sessions helped me understand how the different dispatchers approach their processes and their pain points.

Asaad

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I joined as an ethnographer to help a Zen buddhist meditation center figure out what it takes for people feel supported. Mental models allowed us to see clear steps along an individual’s relationship with the Center, mindful moments involving pivotal steps – getting calm, ringing a bell, sitting in silence. With these, we constructed a prototype for finding spiritual peer-mentors for meditation practice.

Danny Spitzberg

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I have been tasked with several technical projects at Utah State. Mental models have been essential in the planning stage to determine what functionality is the most crucial and what “would be nice.” To come back weekly and look at our initial goal has proved helpful in keeping us working in the proper direction.

Rachael Knudsen

Read More Testimonials

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