Book

Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior

Indi Young · Rosenfeld Media Paid Intermediate

Young's method pushes you past what people say they do and toward the reasoning underneath it, the guiding thoughts and feelings a checkbox on a survey can never capture. This is a deeper, slower read than the Mom Test, useful once you are past your first few conversations and want to organize what you are hearing into real patterns. It is a rare research book that treats listening itself as the skill worth practicing.

• Listen for the reasoning behind an action, not just the action itself.
• Group what you hear by underlying purpose, not by who said it or which feature they mentioned.
• A single well run listening session teaches you more than a wide net of shallow ones.