It’s time to be a better person
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Being a user researcher taught me how to be a better person. A better designer. A better human. It taught me how to actively listen, how to never make assumptions and how beautifully different every single human being is. Side note .. In my option, never a truer phrase than ‘to assume is to make an ‘ass’ of ‘u’ and ‘me’.
Kindness is the secret sauce to better experiences.
After 10+ years working in inclusivity space and government services, I have seen the pain and suffering that is caused when designers, and researchers, don’t lead their practice with kindness. Our world is full of creations that don’t meet the basic needs of those who need to use them.
Sadly, this might not be a surprise but it is totally avoidable. It is avoidable when we understand the truth of how designs, spaces, experiences are developed, and what we can do to make them better.
We don’t automatically think ‘kindly’
Right from the outset we often don’t think ‘kindly’. Believe it or not, this skews the end results away from true needs understanding and towards your interests instead.
We are trained to think as researchers that our job inherently is good, and I know a lot of people go into it for that reason. So take this as a sign to reflect and build more conscious kindness into your practice. Use this time to check when you’re focusing on the wrong thing (that’s your wants) instead of what really needs to be uncovered (that’s their needs) will already make a difference.
Practicing being kind
Now, ‘kindness’ is a word not often discussed as a core component of research .. I would love one day to see this in a job ad ....
But until then, I would argue that we all strive to embody Kindness as research practitioners, designers, creatives. Unfortunately, we often don’t meet the mark. We may not go as far as being intentionally cruel, but there’s definitely more we can do.
A quick practice is to think about research as an opportunity to give back, to do something for someone else, not what they can do for you.
It takes work to unlearn practices embedded in design research approaches, in a world where we set goals defined on what we or a client ‘need’ to ‘get out’ of the research. Rarely do business needs align with their core audience needs, even rarer does a business think about the positive opportunities provided to them if we genuinely put the audience first.
Practicing this switch in perspective will quickly identify areas you can bring kinder opportunities and learn for good.
Making you a better person
So how does it make you a better person? Well, you start to think about this in your everyday life. You start seeing the challenges that strangers have, and you start to care more, because you know more.
You also start to see the new possibilities of your user research skills, and they are endless, and everywhere. Finding out truly how people need to navigate the world, feel safe, have independence, take pleasure in the small and the big things, all builds a better life.
When you are kind in your practice from beginning to end you are giving yourself the chance to learn about a whole world of new perspectives. You will learn of the possibilities to make the world better with others, not to feed your own world view.
If you’re still here, I reckon you’re already a kind soul and you want to improve experiences in the world. Let this be a sign to spurr you on and find more opportunities to be kind, to advocate for people with a different life to you, and improve the experiences of many.
Be Kind and start making a real difference.
Alex