There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product—but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users' reasons for doing things. Mental Models gives you the tools to help you grasp, and design for, those reasons. Adaptive Path co-founder Indi Young has written a roll-up-your-sleeves book for designers, managers, and anyone else interested in making design strategic, and successful.
 TESTIMONIALS
 "Indi Young's mental models are the perfect way for your team to integrate your user's perspective into your design. Indi has written a comprehensive guide for anyone who wants to make use of this power design technique. I'll be giving this book out to all of our important clients and insisting they make it part of their process." Jared Spool, CEO &amp; Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
 "Developed over the course of more than ten years, Indi Young's common sense approach focuses on user behavior, diagrammatic representations, and the participation of all stakeholders in collaborative discovery. It is a book that designers and students, alike, will find useful." Richard Buchanan, Professor of Design, School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University
 "Indi Young's new book is a welcome addition, covering an aspect of the design process that is extremely important but often neglected. The book is chock-full of practical advice derived from real-world development projects, but doesn't lose sight of the broad conceptual underpinnings." Ray Valdes, Research Director, Web Services, Gartner Inc.
 "Indi Young gives great insight into the nuts and bolts of understanding, capturing and visualizing user needs. Her "how to" instructions provide clear guidance for teams wishing to undertake a serious effort to architect, design and develop products with the user in mind." Sara L. Beckman, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior

Business & Money

Young, Indi

Marketing & Sales

Rosenfeld Media

Conventional product development focuses on the solution. Empathy is a mindset that focuses on people, helping you to understand their thinking patterns and perspectives. Practical Empathy will show you how to gather and compare these patterns to make better decisions, improve your strategy, and collaborate successfully.

Practical Empathy: For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work

Business Culture

“If you want to understand people, if you want to serve them, sell to them, work with them… then you have to get good at listening to them. The good news is that you can, and that what you’ll find when you do will exceed your expectations.” 
—Alexandra Jacoby, Artist and Online Community R&D 
Product design strategy often seeks first to grow the number of users, and to steer them in ways that benefit the organization. This mindset has driven our organizations into a corner, focused on improving the product. Even when product design teams want to benefit people, they often discover they've harmed people instead by neglecting the diversity of approaches and thinking. 
In this book, world-class researcher Indi Young teaches you how to listen deeply to help your organization move away from a product-focused strategy toward a measurable strategy centered on people and their purpose. 
Page by page, Indi explains clearly: How deep listening is different from interviewing—and from regular conversation Techniques for helping the person unfold their interior cognition How to create a safe space inside a listening session Building assumption-wary knowledge from perspectives that are not your own, nor your team’s 
Across business, education, government, healthcare, and science, better solutions are built from listening. When you recognize diverse perspectives based on peoples’ inner thinking and guiding principles, your team can design solutions that are not just “average,” You will be able to support more people and more thinking styles with solutions that feel uniquely theirs. You will be able to find new opportunities and hidden markets. And most importantly, you will be able to put people and their purpose in the center of your product strategy.

Time to Listen: How Giving People Space to Speak Drives Invention and Inclusion (Assumptions Aside)

Industries

Indi Young Books

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Books by Young, Indi