Designing A Life
A design mindset helps people to practice deep collaboration, break boundaries between team members, and pursue a life, not just a career
Over the past few weeks I have written about design and human complexity through the lens of Spotify and Huge, two companies with different motivations and distinctly different business models. As a design-led agency, Huge collaborated and co-created with the Spotify team, bringing to life the Spotify Advertising platform.
It is obvious that collaboration between two businesses is only as good as its people. Collaboration between people … is tricky. Everyone comes to the table with their own process, their own biases, their own baggage. When two people don’t get along it can be disastrous for the success of the process and the health of the team. When collaborators are able to leave their judgements at the door and stay approachable, teachable, thoughtful, and intentional, the project tends to run smoothly and evolve without a hitch.
Writing about this collaboration caused me to reflect on the design and strategy process as a whole. Does it have an impact on life outside of work? If so, how?
Do certain practices, disciplines, or processes, shape the way we work?
Does a job title have a direct impact on the way individuals come to the proverbial table and interact in a professional setting? Does job function shape the thinking of team members and guide collective decision making? Or, can we chalk up the ways people interact at work to a simple personality test? Should we defer to Myers Briggs before every collaborative exercise?
My hypothesis is that it’s a little bit of both. The roles we play shape our thinking and our thinking shapes how we play our role.
Right now you might feel like Bert:
Allow me to explain.
“Historically, most people didn’t get to choose their jobs”, says Anne Wilson, a professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. “It was usually generational – your father was a carpenter, so you were a carpenter,” she says. “Or, you’d just take a job based on the opportunities available.”1 With increased access to education, we’ve been given the gift of choice. Our professions now reflect what we’re drawn to, and if we’re lucky, what we are passionate about. As such, our personalities have become deeply entwined with our positions. It’s called ‘entrenchment’ and is described as “the blurring of personal and work lives”. This is both a blessing and a curse.
It is a blessing to have the resources and opportunity to choose one’s path in life. For those that have this opportunity, many doors are quickly opened that those without this opportunity will never be granted access to.
It is a curse to exist in a world where people are increasingly pressured to identify as their job title. It “… is especially true among the ‘educated elite’,” says Wilson. “For people who have a certain type of job and certain class, it often becomes how you identify yourself and how others identify you.”2 This forced identification with profession may silo thinking during collaboration and create subconscious hierarchical structures where they need not be.
This is not to say that job function is unimportant. However, the lens by which we perceive ourselves in relation to our position at work, and the positions of others, has an effect on the ways in which we work. “It has been said that 90 percent of the difficulties that organizations face can be attributed to dysfunctional relationships among people.”3 Taking a truthful look at how we each view ourselves and the roles we play can only have a positive effect on our work together.
How does a design practice benefit your life?
A consistent design practice teaches us to use methodologies as tools to uncover truth. It’s this set of tools that first gives designers a way to practice deep empathy, collaboration, listening, and perception. In time, this shapes the way they see the world. Human connectedness becomes less a fascination, more a fact, clearing the way for designers to connect with something greater than oneself, showing them larger processes, living systems.
The more we step out of our own way to analyze our thinking, the better chance we have to see where our thinking is wrong and take adequate measures to fix it. The design process gives us a structure, helping us to see that if this is possible with work, perhaps it is possible for us as well.
Attempting to accurately design one’s life is a dream at best, a false reality. It gives us the illusion of control.
Design as a practice, however, gives us tools to step back and take a glimpse at whats going on in the present moment. It opens our field of view to now, and gives us tools to create change.
If used correctly, the process can also help the user to take the steps towards making that change.
bbc.com/worklife/article/20210409-why-we-define-ourselves-by-our-jobs
bbc.com/worklife/article/20210409-why-we-define-ourselves-by-our-jobs
https://thesystemsthinker.com/human-dynamics-for-the-21st-century/