There are two things on Earth that grate on my nerves to no end. One is bananas; the other is when people refer to a certain milestone or experience in their lives as a mark of "the real world." Graduating from college, returning from a trip abroad, or finishing a substantial service endeavor are all good examples of activities that seem to fall outside the realm of the "real world."
This phrase always makes me wonder, what fake world were you in before that?
In adult life I think people value professional depth. For most people, school is about creating depth in one subject area to pursue after graduation. Work is about becoming a subject matter expert in one field. Graduate degrees are about depth of understanding in one very specific topic. But although our society encourages to specialize professionally and develop a depth of understanding in a particular topic, it personally idealizes those who do the opposite - who have a breadth of interests and engagements in addition to their (to use another buzzword) core competence. The phrase "the real world" is about experiences that create professional depth. But what you do outside that "real world" is what makes you a great designer.
To be a good designer is to possess depth. It's very, very important to understand fully what tasks are needed to achieve a given outcome. That's depth. That's understanding the realities of the use case. To design products for mitral valve repair, I have to have a complete and thorough grasp on the anatomical details of the heart and the physiology of its components. But to understand the user is a different scenario - what are the pain points in the surgeon's particular technique? How many patients does a nurse see in one day? What are the most challenges tasks on the agenda in the operating room? Being able to address depth issues, or task-specific challenges, is to meet your design criteria. But being able to address breadth issues, things that a user can't necessarily articulate for themselves, things that are tangential to the task at hand but functionally related to the use of a device - addressing those issues is what creates products that defy expectation.
It's one reason that I'm such an advocate of engineers having ethnographic experience in user sites. Understanding the technical details of what you're designing to is one thing; but understanding physical environments, workflows, structures, and attitudes are priceless. Processing these connections in one setting can help us translate dissimilar experiences into useful inputs, can help us come up with good questions to ask when we're designing something new. Even just being able to touch something, rather than hear about it, gives us a whole new dimension on what it is we're designing. Watching a patient being transported into the ICU on an Army base in India has helped me translate the mechanical requirements to keep Foley catheters in place for patients in Belgium. Even if that observation didn't take place in the "real world."
 |
| I don't know, it looks pretty real to me... (photo courtesy of... and read the headline for good measure) |
In adult life I think people value professional depth. For most people, school is about creating depth in one subject area to pursue after graduation. Work is about becoming a subject matter expert in one field. Graduate degrees are about depth of understanding in one very specific topic. But although our society encourages to specialize professionally and develop a depth of understanding in a particular topic, it personally idealizes those who do the opposite - who have a breadth of interests and engagements in addition to their (to use another buzzword) core competence. The phrase "the real world" is about experiences that create professional depth. But what you do outside that "real world" is what makes you a great designer.
To be a good designer is to possess depth. It's very, very important to understand fully what tasks are needed to achieve a given outcome. That's depth. That's understanding the realities of the use case. To design products for mitral valve repair, I have to have a complete and thorough grasp on the anatomical details of the heart and the physiology of its components. But to understand the user is a different scenario - what are the pain points in the surgeon's particular technique? How many patients does a nurse see in one day? What are the most challenges tasks on the agenda in the operating room? Being able to address depth issues, or task-specific challenges, is to meet your design criteria. But being able to address breadth issues, things that a user can't necessarily articulate for themselves, things that are tangential to the task at hand but functionally related to the use of a device - addressing those issues is what creates products that defy expectation.
It's one reason that I'm such an advocate of engineers having ethnographic experience in user sites. Understanding the technical details of what you're designing to is one thing; but understanding physical environments, workflows, structures, and attitudes are priceless. Processing these connections in one setting can help us translate dissimilar experiences into useful inputs, can help us come up with good questions to ask when we're designing something new. Even just being able to touch something, rather than hear about it, gives us a whole new dimension on what it is we're designing. Watching a patient being transported into the ICU on an Army base in India has helped me translate the mechanical requirements to keep Foley catheters in place for patients in Belgium. Even if that observation didn't take place in the "real world."
0 people have something to say:
New comments are not allowed.