Intelligence vs Understanding

Indi Young

A founding partner of Adaptive Path in 2001, Indi has worked with an impressive collection of clients, including Visa, Charles Schwab, Sybase, Agilent, Dow Corning, Microsoft, and PeopleSoft. Now working as an independent consultant, she is the author of a recent Rosenfeld Media book “Mental Models: Aligning design strategy with human behavior”.
http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/mental-models/

Solving problems requires more than brainpower and a design fix. We need to feel our customer’s pain to fully understand what they need. So throw off your thongs and get ready to walk a mile in your client’s shoes.

Further Reading

• Kevin Brooks
• Paul Ekman
• Emotions Revealed on Amazon

This article was originally published in Scroll Number 1, on the 23^rd of September 2008. You can obtain this issue in print by scrolling over to the Purchase page.

Comments on this article

1. 

   Written by Pedro Mendes on the 29^th of October 2008.

   I mostly agree with Indi’s article. The problem may be when between the designers and the costumer comes a middle layer of managers who think they know what the end user wants. It is a struggle, believe me! :-)

2. 

   Written by Daniel Reeders on the 31^st of October 2008.

   I’m reading Indi’s article in a rather different context, working in gay men’s health promotion, and it’s all highly applicable to the key challenges in my work. There’s a powerful expectation that we’ll all use published research in public health and the clinical sciences to produce “evidence-based interventions”, yet it’s taking the time for making human connection and empathy that produces really good campaigns and resources. I guess my question then is: how do we legitimise empathy as a source of data and the basis of business or public health decision-making?

3. 

   Written by Indi Young on the 4^th of November 2008.

   The best way to legitimize empathy as a research source is to practice it “under the radar,” if you can’t get permission, and then point to the good results that come from it and open people’s eyes. I have had to do the same thing for the past decade, plus I can be very persuasive. (I have to admit that my clients self-select these days, so I haven’t had to fight quite as much for it recently.)

   The more of us that talk about it and publish about it, the more you can point your naysayers/doubters to the collected experiences.