This post was going to be about the emerging best practices in social design. I was going to talk about situations designers are taught to avoid and training that is meant to enable collaboration and relationship building. Kate, one of the founders of Design Impact passed along a great link, which identifies a few guidelines for people volunteering overseas. As I read through the article, I remembered some advice a friend of mine gave me about overseas work. She told me that I will change myself more than I will change a community I am working with.
At first I was a little offended when she said this. I don't expect to change a community. I expect to collaborate with my organization to define a problem and work towards solving it. But then, I started to question what my motivations really are. Why am I pausing my life in a city that I love to travel thousands of miles to volunteer for a community that I have no prior attachment to? I could volunteer for any number of places here. What is it that I am looking for in India that I can't find in San Francisco? The answer involves some empathy, quite a bit of curiosity, a chunk of challenge and the opportunity to meet people I would never normally meet.
I recently finished some usability testing for a project I have been working on. Usability testing involves building a prototype of a design concept and testing it with consumers. Consumer research and testing are my favorite parts of the design process. I love talking with people to better understand their interests and behaviors. Everyone has their own ways of doing things. The problems and subsequent work-arounds that people build into their daily life is fascinating. These solutions highlight the ingenuity and creativity that many people have but don't think they embody. Inevitably, every research project I am on, I develop friend crushes on a few of my participants. You always meet a few people that you really resonate with or respect how they live their life. For me, it is usually people from different walks of life that I would never normally interract with.
My recent participant crush was an older asian woman who was so vocal about our prototype that she started yelling at the device. She kept telling me how she understood the system, but her mother that doesn't read english would never get it. "Why is there so much reading?" she kept saying (yelling, actually). For onlookers, it was hilarious. For me, it was an honest reaction that I was trying very hard to parse out. It was an exhausting interview, but I really liked the woman. She brought me into her world. Her gestures, her approach, her way of communicating was so different than I was used to that it was very hard to control at times, but it was this lack of control that made the session that much more valuable. I was forced to ask why way more than normal because I couldn't identify with her and couldn't interpret her non-verbal gestures.
These cues are cultural insignias, they are shared actions between members of a group that reveal personality, culture and even status. These symbols are revealing if you know their pattern. I struggled with this woman because I couldn't read her. Her behaviors weren't patterns to me, they were just outbursts and movements. I imagine this will happen more often than not in Bangalore. I will struggle through communication breakdowns, thinking something has been understood when really it hasn't. And that's fine, something to be expected, but I want to try to remember to ask why. It is something I don't typically do with my friends or acquaintances. I am not on stage for them. I let things slide instead of probing about the depth of reason.
In research, the first rule is to always ask why. It is a simple question that can guide a conversation into more revealing territory. It is not always comfortable being on the receiving end of that question, but this is where being an outsider helps. I am given more room than locals to not understand behaviors and cultural norms. This is one asset to bringing in a newbie. As long as I question things politely, it could be very insightful. Pair this culled knowledge with a cultural expert and well, that seems like a mighty powerful agent for change.
So, what is it that I am looking for, then? The reality is that I want to give back. For all the different names that social design can have, Design for development or Designing with and not for, they all have one thing in common- responsibility. I want the time to focus on a project that benefits a community, not a consumer/corporation, and want to be given the chance to take full responsibility for my actions. I want to work with people who share a common goal of change and support them however I can. I know I can do that in the states, and know I will be given opportunities to do so in the future, but this is just different.
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