What I talk about when I talk about Designing*
Hi, I’m Ingrid! And you are…? A person? A bot? You’re not sure? No problem. Let’s just say that, basically, you’re someone that I don’t know, but, if you’re reading this you’re either curious about the title of the article or was brought here by some algorithm misunderstanding (although I believe there’s no such thing as incoherent algorithms. Humans, yes. Codes, no. Anyways).
Before going further in whichever may be the reasons you ended up here, I’ll take the stage first to explain myself (and my reasons): I’m a Brazilian design student in the final year of graduation, which means that I need to present something at the end of it as a result of all my (7!!!) years of studies.
Because of that, I’ve been thinking a lot during these past few weeks about many things I could use as a final research theme. I also made a list of interesting topics I could explore a bit more before ending this cycle of my student life. Yeah, a lot of cool stuff, amazing authors, visionary theoretic ideas, etc. But that’s not the point now.
The thing is that at the end of the day, the same question that has always shown up before I fall asleep since grad-school-day-one is still here: how do I explain to people (aka family & friends) what is this “design thing” that I’m so involved with? How can I make them understand the chaotic and diverse possibilities related to this so-wide-world-spread-and-lately-very-overused word that is “design”? Particularly, “I can’t” remains as my answer. I don’t have a super developed synthesis power to (and honestly, wouldn’t even try to) explain what is everything that design is. But I sure can explain what I talk about when I talk about designing. And surprisingly, the list of these things contains no more than three basic items. Check it out.
#1 People
My all-time favourite subject. To talk to, to talk about, to talk with. To bring them together. To unfold all the potential they have within their minds. To see how they achieve different points inside my own mind. It’s just like the saying “the more, the merrier”. I love people (even the not-so-good ones, despite the challenges offered by knowing them). People are the first pillar of any Design project. If there wasn’t any person in the world, who would we Design for? Would Design exist at all? Who would have “invented” it?
But people are hard. They demand a lot and offer a little (not a general rule, but, you know…). People are not simple. They are confusing, messed up, too anxious, too busy, too happy, too intelligent, too slow, too early, too unstable, too online, too offline, too angry, too bossy, too worried, too positive, too negative, too sad, too boring, too nice, too much. People are too much. And so is Design.
#Time
My second all-time favourite thing to discuss when it comes to “pick a subject and start a conversation”. It’s our common ground. Every person that I talk to is mandatorily sharing the same time and planet as me (I’ve never talked to an astronaut travelling outside the Earth, so the affirmation is still valid). Other people and I can (and surely will) have different perceptions on time, about what it is, how do we spend it, in which activities we invest it, how is it connected to our minds and consciousness about the world, and so on. Time is our major ruler. No matter where we are on Earth, the clock is still ticking 24/7. Even for the people who don’t wear watches or have not seen a clock in their entire lives. The sun comes up, the sun comes down. And there goes another day.
But time is beautiful. And also brutal. Heartless. It has no mercy. It is as it is. It won’t slow down or go faster as we please. Not in a million years (only if perhaps “tele-transportation” become a real thing, who knows…). But the most important-scary-exciting thing is that time can not be restored. Once you “spent it”, it’s gone. Deal with it.
#Control
If you were here by my side, you would have heard my big, sonorous and loud laugh. A good, very good laugh. Because control in Design is the biggest lie of all times. There is no such thing as controlling anything in a Design project. We can try to foresee someone’s actions, predict which item they will pick on a shelf or which button they will click first in a new app. And it can all be wrong because, you know, people are people. And they are not predictable.
But control is important. It’s a powerful exercise for our minds. It teaches us to deal not with the unpredictable, but with us, with what can we do in order to keep moving even with our insecurities, doubts, fears and worries.
Controlling ourselves is also not possible, as much as some people try… And some people I know try really hard. But learning how we react to different scenarios create a history of actions that our brain is capable of organizing and putting into place for when we need to access it. We can have different reactions to different situations, and we can’t control all of them, nor reactions or situations, but our “inputs storage” is a very important part of who we are under pressure, dealing with stressful meetings, having difficult conversations and designing complex projects. Not having control is not a bad thing. And we should try and deal better with it.
That being said…
After listing and describing all the things I talk about when I talk about Designing, I hope you’re not under the spell of me being a nice person with a clear and balanced mind. I’m not. All these things I said are based on many years of dealing with people, time and control in the craziest and hardest ways possible. I learned a lot from these “bad” experiences, they led me to where I’m now: a place of more awareness about myself, my Design choices and my career paths. It’s still difficult, it’s still confusing. But at some point along the way, I got used to the mess. I actually started to like it, and perhaps that’s what kept me in the Design world, who knows…
Finally, the main reason for this article getting to live outside my mind is another lesson I got from these past years at college: you think clearer when you give your thoughts a ride in the real world (“real” meaning: outside your head). Talking to a friend, writing a blog post, making a presentation at uni. Get it out. Maybe someone has a similar idea, fear, inspiration, proposal or question like yours. I’m a huge fan of knowledge sharing, including the knowledge we take for granted, like our silly thoughts. They’re not silly at all. But that's another talk.
So, talk to people. Use your time carefully, but not too much because you can’t control it as you’d like. Let your thoughts out so the design can get in. And next time you’re concerned about having a good or bad experience in some design project or at a different design job when it comes to our “experience storage”, remember: “the more, the merrier”.
*title explicitly inspired by the amazing book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, by Haruki Murakami
