iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Empathy has a bad rep because folks think it's only about emotions. It's not. Well, 'emotional empathy' is about recognizing someone's current emotions. But 'emotional empathy' is NOT SCALABLE. An org can only make sure its representatives (sales, VPs, call centers) are good at it.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The AI-search engine reduced search results exactly the way the US economy+deregulation made mega-corporations. It made it really hard for new ideas to surface.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The years rip past. A decade whizzed by. Yeah. Life—are we enjoying it? Family time, outdoors, community events? I was in a crowd yesterday, my once-a-year festival. When I met someone new I asked, "What do you do?" We identify ourselves by the work we do. Our projects.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Did you know?! We have launched a Skyline generator! You feed it your synthesized data sheet and a beautiful Mental Model Skyline gets rendered in your Mural board!

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Skyline is for seeing where to think. Gaps, opportunities. Pull together all yout signals and layer them on one Skyline.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

How many newsletters have you ignored this week? Well, next week you'll have time. (It was a holiday week in the US, so I ignored probably 5.) 😂😆😱 My newsletter is on Buttondown now! If you were already subscribed, you are still subscribed. 😅 If you want to check it out (next week!), click here:

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Some kinds of solutions seek to change a person’s buying decisions, or to manipulate a person’s behavior, not to their benefit. The gain goes to the corporation; the cost goes to the person.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

🧵 The average. El promedio. It has two meanings. The first meaning is "not memorable." - "How was your day?" "Just average." - "You ate at that place last night. How was it?" "It was fine." - "Did you enjoy the movie." "Eh. It was an average romcom."

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I kept this notice on the fridge for a while because something struck me as "off" about it. PG&E (our utility company in northern California) notified us months ago about their new $24/month Base Services Charge. Finally I realized what was "off."

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

"You just don't get me." Have you ever felt that way? If so, you know what a lot of your users feel about a solution that doesn't quite fit them. They are easily pulled away from your solution.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Listening Deeply: did you read the book or take the course? To truly apply it for your org, you need to find patterns. Otherwise it remains at the 1:1 level, which is fine for relationship/trust building.

Book cover: Time to Listen by Indi Young
Courses: 1. Listening Deeply
2. Finding Thinking Styles
indiyoung.com

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Extend your total addressable market: By understanding the variety of cognition, your org can finally see and address more people. JOIN THE COURSE GROUP: starts Friday 21-Aug, morning for #India, #Australia, #SouthKorea, and everyone in those time zones.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

You know how Murderbot gets an emotion-check routine in the new book Platform Decay, by Martha Wells? It has crazy-fun recognizing what emotion it's experiencing then largely ignoring it. But I was not igoring it. (Nor was the author.) Each emotion lead to inner thinking or to another emotion.

Book cover: Platform Decay by Martha Wells
#BookRecommendation

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #6 of 6: Thinking styles are for making progress and seeing opportunities when demographics are swept away

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #5 of 6: Demographic assuptions stick in your subconscious. Refuse to let them in.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #4 of 6: Academics also have bad habits of inserting demographics about very small samples. Don't accept the bad habit. Ask WHY? What is the purpose?

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #3 of 6: Economists (who habitually work with population data) have a bad habit of inserting demographics about very small samples. Don't accept the bad habit. Ask WHY? What is the purpose?

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #2 of 6: Demographics bleed over into propaganda, to make people think of a group as bad, show contempt for them, or give them unjust treatment. Demographics are truly dangerous in this context.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

You should not use demographics when creating products or services. Reason #1 of 6: Thinking styles are not population-level (unless you work in government)

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

One reason why you should not use demographics when creating products or services: Intro: There ARE places where demographics are valid, such as in population level tracking.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

😍Enrollment open: Finding Thinking Styles (6 weeks) starts 21-Aug, aimed at Australia, Asia, New Zealand lnkd.in/dZiJjxxg (4 price tiers) People don't all think alike. Don't expect your AI-solution to satisfy each person. What are the 3 or 5 or 9 thinking styles to train them on?

a cartoon of people all working on a Mural board via Zoom

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

People are not all alike. So why do orgs still have the mindset of making one solution work for "everyone?" For example, A/B testing results in one answer. youtu.be/HTHHMzJDbHk

youtu.be

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Many teams touch on cognition (thinking, emotional reactions, personal rules) in their research, but typically do not guide decisions by nor measure by it. Teams' processes are like wanting to run an ultra in the mountains on steep, rocky trails but only training on flat pavement. It doesn't work.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Measure the outcomes a person has. Their outcomes on their own goal (aim, purpose). Measure it using their cognition, and suddenly the whole "WHY" question gets answered clearly. (Plus everyone loves to see these measurements improve over the months and years.)

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

What is collaboration on a team (or across teams)? Collaboration requires: - Erasure of traditional power-based reward systems - Skill to hold ambiguity and keep iterating until the team gets deeper

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Characters instead of personas: To tell a good story you need characters and a plot. Make up a cast of characters to use over and over, like episodes on TV. Each character represents one of the thinking styles.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

When you use thinking styles, the point is to stop judging other people's way of doing something. You never try to change someone's thinking style. Instead you support the thinking style.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Don't make this mistake. Don't try to understand the whole person you are supporting with your solution or policy. Instead, only focus on the slice of what they are thinking about which you are positioned to support.

People are not interested in being "a user." They are interested in addressing a particular thing.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

🧵The word "scientific" gets used in business as a synonym for "trustworthy" or "valid." Doing experiments like AB tests is not science. Hard science is practiced upon objects with no consciousness or agency, objects that behave the same each time.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Now we (will) have time to do the work of understanding people's cognition so that we can properly train our models. Skylines and thinking styles let your team stabilize your direction and explore paths no one else is exploring.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

🧵 Thinking styles: Groups of people whose cognition is similar as framed by the person's purpose. (Not made up! Only a cast of characters is made up.) Thinking styles emerge from the listening sessions.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

🧵 The value of a company like a B-Corp (Benefit corporation) is measured in part by how much their solutions help society and help the planet. Orgs in this age of AI can also add a measurement of how much they help individuals do what the individual intended to do.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

🧵 If we want to admit to our assumptions, here is a common one. Teams divide behaviors by demographics, such as income level. The behaviors, instead, are guided by people's cognition.

teams cannot mistake a thinking style for an “edge case”

thinking styles are just various approaches to the purpose

... colors the essential thoughts

e.g. people who pay more for a ticket are sprinkled in every thinking style group, same with people who pay less

Illustration of a crowd saying: "WE ARE NOT AN EDGE CASE"

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

When it comes to AI-generated images, Jessica Soto and I have developed a set of personal rules. In the spirit of helping us navigate this new age, we thought we'd share them in case they are helpful.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

🧵 I love reading fiction. 💕 I remember one year I got to take a vacation, my suitcase was filled mostly with paperback books, not much clothing.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

🧵 What would happen if your org could grow their market simply by recognizing (and supporting) different thinking styles? AI can help you ... if you help AI understand the thinking styles.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

🧵 AI responds to human thinking. Building solutions with AI requires understanding how people think. Understanding how people think is what Data Science that Listens does. We've done this for 30 years. And it is NOT about people's opinions, preferences, and explanations.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

What if the means of interacting with a product, service, or policy can change according to your thinking style? For example, a washing machine. Modern machines have all sorts of settings, but they're all there. It's not designed for your particular way of thinking.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

🧵 Thinking styles are the only strategic practice that makes human variety visible and actionable — before ideation begins. Thinking styles surface the cognitive diversity that demographics and preferences miss.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

🧵 "If you want to move the needle, you have to understand what your customers are addressing and measure the value for them. That's what that harm scale is about - actual value. ... Going back and mending existing solutions is very innovative. And it allows you to grow within the market you know."

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

🧵 Make time to forget about your product (or service, or policy). Forget the thing you're creating/polishing and spend a while remembering what people are trying to address. They might use your solution; they might use other solutions. They definitely use their memory.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

🧵 In my own lifetime I've seen three different fashions of capitalism. So I know it'll change. (Quality metrics were popular once. Then innovation and distruption were all the rage. Now it's all about cutting expenses (labor!) and charging extra for features that used to be part of the package.)

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Average user: A myth. You have a variety of people in your audience. One solution only fits half (or less) of your audience. –– Get the "I SPY: Data Science that Listens" game here: 🔍 indiyoung.com/wp-content/u...

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

🧵 Meetings or working sessions: which do you do? Meetings typicaly cause more work to be done afterward. By contrast, working sessions (or collaboration sessions) have "no homework." All the work is finished in the session by the people present.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Many teams limit their thinking by assuming they are only making one solution that must work for "everyone." And that solution gets implemented according to the thinking style of the team. So many other approaches get ignored.

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

So far this year, how many lunches or coffees have you had with decision-makers in your org?

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

Is there something that you deliver along with the mental model skyline to help communicate those findings? How do you convey them in a concise way?

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

🧵 What is it with subscriptions?! They all follow pattern of having a "free" version then bouncing up to a many-featured option with higher pricing? Why is the "one little step" up always missing, when it's a very common thinking style? ("Use just enough for what I need.")

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Indi Young @indiyoung.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Edge cases: Don't use this phrase to describe groups of people. Edge cases only apply to a process. Edge cases are other ways to do the process when the context is slightly different, like "it's below freezing" or "several people are out sick today."

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