Diversity > Expertise: The Design World and Beyond

            Though the values of independence our society asserts help build us into competent, productive people, these notions often become absorbed and interpreted over time to cultivate mindsets that insist, “I alone can fix any problem”.  Self-confidence is good and needed to function well in life.  Arrogance and single-minded thinking, on the other hand, can yield unwieldy problems in circumstances that may affect many other peoples’ lives.  And so, though experts in different areas can make huge positive impacts on the world, oftentimes the best solutions are generated through collaboration with other minds from other backgrounds.

            Of course, there are bundles of benefits to developing expertise in particular subjects, both for the expert themselves and for those impacted by an expert’s work.  For experts, as they continue to expose themselves to their particular disciplines and fields of specialization, their cognitive maps of how to operate with and through such mental environments grow incredibly rich.  With time, they become increasingly skilled at discerning what details may be considered significant to given situations; they’ll shed off unneeded details and concisely compact information held in their minds.  Along with this, their frequented actions become habitual and automatic with time, as these processes come to feel so natural to them that they need no longer heed much, or any, directed attention to perform such certain activities. 

This all being said, every person holds different levels of expertise in some fashion or another, whether they be in areas and actions that may include commonplace activities, such as driving, or in skills scarce to the general public (such as welding).  Accordingly, we all hold different interests, skillsets, knowledge, and beliefs about the world for a reason—so that we can coexist and thrive through cooperation.  We humans are social, political animals who draw meaning and wellbeing from life through deep social connections to others.  Yet despite this fact of our nature, so many people maintain that only they have the power, skills, knowledge, and status to fix this or that problem.

In some cases this mindset is fine since we need to grow able to sustain and manage ourselves in the world as individuals—asking others how we should consider every action we take would be inefficient and unproductive.  However, in other larger cases, especially those that involve other people in some manner, detrimental effects could result without further consultation (e.g. an expert may assume they understand the needs and desires of the people they attempt to serve, only to find they miscalculated peoples’ concerns—ending up with a project that nobody needs or wants at all).

Let’s take a look at the world of product design to illustrate:

Product designers design objects and tools to help people operate more smoothly in their environments, so that people will not have to drain their directed attention through trying to figure out how to use items to meet their goals.  This explains why so many of the everyday objects we use take the forms and shapes that they do: the objects instructively “explain” themselves to users.  For example: the bowl shape of a coffee mug will communicate to a user that it can hold some sort of object or substance (such as hot coffee).  The handle of the mug will then lead a person to deduce the loop as a good place to grasp when using the mug (useful when trying to carry hot liquids so as to not burn one’s hands).

The process for designing products can be very long and laborious, as designers will typically follow a multi-step process that involves making numerous models for each stage they consider—this will inevitably involve a proliferation of testing and chucking results.  To produce an effective design, a designer will make many efforts to get to know their users not only at the beginning the design process, but also through to the end of production.  Designers may engage in an exercise called “empathetic reflection”, attempting to place themselves in situations their users typically face by role playing as the users themselves.  To exemplify: if a designer wants to make a knife for a one-handed person, they may try tying one hand behind their back or putting their arm in a sling while attempting to chop different kinds of food.  Along with this, of course, the designers will seek feedback and gather information from the users themselves, allowing users to explain their experiences and concerns with regards to the object(s) in consideration.  Designers may also have their clients test out their designed products throughout various steps of the project to ensure success of the design.

Here’s a video from ABC about a famous design company called IDEO (a design team that strives to hire people from all sorts of disciplines, including psychologists, artists, and engineers):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJOV-YCieI

These ideas presented in the product design process can be seen as analogous to many other situations encountered in life, as we should always remain mindful to include and hear out the voices of others we may impact with our actions.  This will prove most effective in circumstances that allow us to gather wide-ranging, representative samples of people.  This, however, does not necessarily imply that ‘more is better’.  Rather diversity of input can create stronger, more comprehensive solutions.  This can be seen in cases where companies will seek to hire people from a diverse array of backgrounds, as just hiring more ‘good’ people will often mean hiring more people that hold the same (or very similar) cognitive maps of the problems they hope to confront.  Instead, many employers now make more efforts to seek out (intellectual) people that can provide different vantage points of situations (meaning much variation with regards to prior experiences that make up their employees’ mental maps).  With many minds included, such a diverse crowd will become wiser and reduce error in calculations (peoples’ errors end up cancelling each other out).  Moreover, additional background information generated from greatly varied perspectives can fill in gaps in knowledge and enrich mental maps for all involved.  This can, in effect, can further improve the experiences of those who are exposed to and affected by their works.