Indi Young

Freelance Software Design Researcher

San Francisco

Indi is a pioneer of design strategy, interaction design, and information architecture, helping to create ideas and methods and spread them around the globe. Her special focus is clarity about how people reason, thereby reducing risk and cost to any kind of organization.

Indi is also an empathy researcher and writer. She helps organizations of any size explore different perspectives, both internal and external, to bring insights that help clarify and reframe the way people make things and the way they work together. She created mental model diagrams, was the first Rosenfeld Media author, and was a founder of Adaptive Path.

At Adaptive Path she used the research and diagramming techniques she created, mental model diagrams, to help clients see the gaps between their offerings and what customers intended to accomplish. Success with clients enabled them to indulge in the passion of spreading ideas around, so Adaptive Path was able to launch two yearly conferences, UX Week and Managing Experience, several intensive workshops, as well as publications, reports, and the design blog. At the five-year anniversary of the agency, her contributions to the foundation of the practice were in place and she has since been able to return to her own path of consulting and writing.