Rosenverse
Thinking styles: Mend hidden cracks in your market

Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.

Log in Create free account

100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.

Thinking styles: Mend hidden cracks in your market

Wednesday, January 8, 2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Share the love for this talk
Thinking styles: Mend hidden cracks in your market
Speakers: Indi Young
Link:

Summary

Thinking styles are not like horoscopes, which apply to every aspect of a person's life. Instead thinking styles describe a person's core approach to a particular purpose. The point of thinking styles is to recognize that there is a variety of approaches to a purpose, none of which is "better" than another. And thinking styles derive from qual research. This makes thinking styles incredibly powerful for your team and your org. You can easily embrace broader perspectives, invent more, and fill the gaps in your solutions.

Key Insights

  • •

    Thinking styles describe people’s cognition within a specific frame or goal, not as universal personality traits.

  • •

    Demographics do not reliably predict thinking or decision-making patterns in users.

  • •

    The same individual can exhibit multiple thinking styles depending on context or over time.

  • •

    Thinking styles include a mix of inner thoughts, emotional reactions, and personal guiding rules.

  • •

    Using thinking styles layered over mental model skylines reveals gaps where a product may fail to support certain cognitive approaches.

  • •

    Storytelling characters embody thinking styles rather than demographic stereotypes to foster nuanced understanding.

  • •

    Designing by thinking style rather than demographic allows better inclusivity for different cognitive needs.

  • •

    Friction and adversity in situations often trigger changes in thinking styles, requiring adaptable design.

  • •

    Thinking styles are frame-dependent; one person’s style as a caregiver differs from their style as a professional or friend.

  • •

    Applying thinking styles to product features and strategy helps align solutions with users’ real lives and intentions.

Notable Quotes

"We are marinating in this assumption that demographic groups define cognition, but they don't."

"Thinking styles are not horoscopes or Myers-Briggs; they only apply within a specific frame of intent or goal."

"If you try to describe a person as 'the grumbler' across all their life, you miss the context and purpose."

"Demographics don’t cause thinking; past experiences, personal rules, and emotions do."

"Your thinking style while caregiving might be ‘Give dignity and agency’ but change as resistance grows."

"Friction in a situation can cause a person to switch thinking styles, not personality types."

"We can use mental model skylines with thinking styles to find support gaps we didn’t see before."

"Casting diverse characters who represent thinking styles breaks down demographic stereotypes."

"A frustrated passenger at a delayed flight might just need acknowledgment, not dismissal."

"Talking about thinking styles is just as easy and fast a shortcut as talking about demographics, but more useful."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jennifer Strickland
Adopting a "Design By" Method
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Dolly Parikh
Exit Interview #7: Journey of a Social Entrepreneur
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Katie Johnson
Disrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Sara Conklin
A UXer’s 12-Month Journey from Climate Concern to Climate Credibility
2025 • Climate UX Interest Group
Sam Proulx
Mobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Changying (Z) Zheng
Practical DesignOps: From Ideas to Tools That Teams Actually Use
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Crystal Yan
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
Aras Bilgen
Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Billy Carlson
Principles of Team Wireframing
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Abby Covert
Stuck? Diagrams Help
2022 • DesignOps Community
Sam Proulx
Online Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
2023 • Design in Product 2023
Gold
Aletheia Delivre
New Shapes and Emerging Identities for Design Ops
2025 • DesignOps Summit 2025
Gold
Renee Bouwens
Landing Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
2023 • QuantQual Interest Group
Shanti Mathew
Civic Design at Scale: Introducing the Public Policy Layer Cake
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Catherine Courage
The Enterprise UX Journey: Lessons From the Voyage & The Opportunity Ahead
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Louis Rosenfeld
Coffee with Lou: Should You Write a (UX) Book?
2024 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Marc Fonteijn

"High quality personal connections mean you can engage on a level playing field with serious professionals."

Marc Fonteijn Ru Butler

Increase your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)

December 3, 2024

Dem Gerolemou

"You have to make the hard thing easier to do. Behavioral change must be lower friction."

Dem Gerolemou Alexis Oh Neef Rehman

Climate technology fundamentals

May 15, 2024

Daniela Magaña Flores

"Doing at least two benchmarking rounds lets you see if optimizations have measurable impacts over time."

Daniela Magaña Flores Ariane Rahn Jeff Ephraim Bander

Ahead of Competition: Learn What UX Benchmarking Can Do for Your Business Today

March 10, 2022

Abbey Smalley

"I met with my partners and leaders to really dig into their hopes, fears, and dreams about where they wanted to go."

Abbey Smalley Sylas Souza

Scaling UX Past the Size of Your Team

January 8, 2024

Patrick Commarford

"If you’re like us, you’d love to have 100% of the UX talent every project needs, but your team isn’t large enough."

Patrick Commarford

Design Staffing for Impact

January 8, 2024

Xenia Adjoubei

"We were interested in supporting networks of self-organization and mutual aid formed between refugees and host communities."

Xenia Adjoubei Sean Bruce

Empowering Communities Through the Researcher in Residence Program

March 29, 2023

Craig Villamor

"Make it easy to do the right thing, and as a side effect, make it harder to do the wrong thing."

Craig Villamor

Design Systems for Ethical Design

January 26, 2023

Jon Fukuda

"DP&M tools pull together necessary reference materials and design deliverables, showing how they relate to each other."

Jon Fukuda Ellie Krysl

Design Planning and Management Support

October 3, 2023

Iain McMaster

"31% say design just executes product’s vision, 48% say product and design have different visions, only 21% say they work together towards shared goals."

Iain McMaster IHan Cheng

Design and Product: from Frenemy to Harmony

November 29, 2023