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Paying Better Attention to the Problem with Indi Young
Summary
In tech culture, everyone is hell-bent on coming up with answers and solutions. We all assume we know what the person’s problem is; rarely does tech culture start at the very beginning, understanding the variety of approaches real people have to their real purposes and different moods and contexts. Instead, we build an idea into experiments to see if it solves the imagined “problem.” Sound familiar? We can’t go on solving things based on our own thin understanding of how others perceive the problem. We can’t go on assuming everyone is in the same mood and context. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Indeed, we have done a lot of accidental harm in the world with the assumption that the tools we design are “neutral.” We need to get better at paying attention. We need to slow down and gather a richer, more nutritious understanding of the people we are trying to support. And we need to point a beam of light into possible future outcomes. Let’s put equal emphasis on the problem. Spending equal time in the problem space generates rich understanding. Understanding the depths, perspectives, horizons and histories of the way people achieve their purposes opens up loads more opportunities. We can begin making solutions that eschew “engagement” to truly support different people in different ways. The problem space deserves more attention and a slow cycle all of its own.
Key Insights
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Most organizations overemphasize solutions and ignore deep understanding of users’ purposes in the problem space.
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Big data correlations often lead to misleading conclusions if context and underlying reasoning aren’t explored.
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Demographic breakdowns like age or gender rarely capture the true diversity of user thinking and motivations.
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Thinking Styles are a more meaningful way to segment users based on their purposes and mental approaches.
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Listening sessions provide rich qualitative data necessary to build cognitive empathy and uncover deep user insights.
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Cognitive empathy is a skill that requires going beyond surface observations to understand people’s inner voices.
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Technology disciplines are immature compared to fields like architecture or museum design that prioritize varied user purposes.
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Most tech companies operate without proper ethical research oversight (e.g., institutional review boards).
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Jobs to Be Done is useful for strategy but inadequate alone without rich qualitative problem space research.
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Rich problem space research results remain valuable and relevant for years, unlike short-term solution testing data.
Notable Quotes
"We live in a solution culture that glorifies people who create solutions but not those who create knowledge."
"Correlation is not causation, and a lot of people in technology don’t understand that."
"Research theater is when results are designed just to create a reaction, not real understanding."
"Purpose is a super important word—understanding what a person is trying to get done, not just their behavior."
"You can’t meaningfully segment users by demographics alone if you want to support their real purposes."
"Cognitive empathy only forms with depth; you can’t build it at the surface level."
"Empathy is not sensitivity or an emotion—it is a skill that you have."
"Most technology research is not research at all but at best focus group testing, and often lacks ethics."
"We have this piece of glass and there’s a person on the other side, but we don’t understand their purpose."
"You have to build all the puzzle pieces with clear summaries before the patterns come together in mental models."
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