Indi Young recently published her book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior, which shows other user experience professionals (and executives as well) how to align product design with customer behavior research. Mental models help organizations get inside their potential customers' minds, which leads to more lucid decision-making during the lifetime of the design. Indi consults, conducts workshops, and speaks at various conferences and events.
After graduating from Cal Poly with a degree in Computer Science in 1987, Indi spent five years as a programmer. During this time she became acutely aware of gaping holes in software where the user interface ought to be. Having few tools for understanding user motivations, Indi started out drawing state machines of user activity, and ended up just going out to talk to users about the deep roots behind what they were trying to accomplish. Thus her career as a UX designer was born.
