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Design should be fun. If I were to boil down my approach to design, that would be it. It should be fun. Everything I do in planning and running my projects is aimed at making the process fun, as much as it can be. But even things that should be fun or might be fun or could be fun instead cause me dread. I can feel the dread coming a mile away. I might be especially dour one Monday morning and realize that I have a meeting on Thursday that I’m Not Looking Forward To.
Abstract, undefined dread holds you captive. A vauge understanding of what’s triggering the negative feelings doesn’t enable you to overcome it, or manage it. So I ask this question to get at what’s under the anxiety or fear. I look at the upcoming conversation or activity or task and say, “I’ve done this dozens of times before. Why do I dread this particular instance of it?” Perhaps I do this because I can’t just sit with the feeling. Perhaps I do it because I hope to overcome it. But sometimes I think I ask this question merely to distract me from the dread, and perhaps find a way to make the activity less dreadful.
As I’ve implied, I this is a question I ask myself, an exercise in self-reflection. Questions like this allow me to explore my practice, acknowledging the aspects of design that make me uncomfortable, and delving into an understanding of why these feelings arise.
Over the course of my career I’ve identified patterns – aspects of activities or tasks that I know I will dread.
Even a little bit of insight about what makes some parts of the process uncomfortable can shed a lot of light on your practice. Knowing what parts are difficult or cause anxiety can help you understand yourself as a designer. Your instinct might be to avoid these activities – entirely your perogative. But for me
A shrug. A sheepish shake of the head. Sometimes it’s hard to know what makes us dread something. Perhaps the anxiety looms large. Perhaps it’s difficult for us to be honest with ourselves. An objective interrogation of our feelings does not come easy. When they answer doesn’t come easily, I generally go through each piece of the upcoming activity – the nature of the work, the participants, my role or responsibilities, the
For a long time I dreaded user interviews. Although I generally like meeting new people, not knowing what I was getting into with a new user, and feeling a little insecure about the topic at hand created some internal strife. But I never felt the dread when I scheduled the interview. It was always as we got closer to the date. I find this aspect of the human psyche fascinating.
No one should be compelled to do work that make them feel unsafe.
ALTERNATE
ALTERNATE