You’ll learn how to challenge your own approaches. This can apply to how you do your work, tell stories, and execute.
When designing experiences for human beings, a singular principle is at work—moving individuals from the familiar to the foreign. My fellow professionals are confused. They wonder if there is still a need for UX/UI/AX/CX in a world of AI. They question the relevance of the core components. Designers refer to these components by various jargoned-up titles that sadly litter the landscape.
There is an aphorism. ‘Burn the boats, ‘ which in today’s world translates to we are not turning back, going home, turning around… etc. Leaving your own comfort zone is one thing, but creating a design that embodies this concept is challenging. Teams and clients resist change. Nearly all non-designers do too. They resist moving from familiar to foreign in life and work. Status quo bias.
Now, I work with teammates and clients. We handle the several biases that people bring to nearly every interaction. These biases are found in almost every narrative or story.
Preps:
Folks who start with decks find it familiar. Instead, start with a script, a narrative, or outcomes desired. Pretend there is no deck—tell me a story. This approach is foreign to many. You can start without the familiar, try a different route.
The struggle isn’t the prep itself; it’s often why and how, and how much. Overprepping is the operative word in getting yourself and those with you ready for whatever may happen. Situational awareness, self-awareness, all the fears, uncertainties, and doubts, getting them all out on the table for consideration.
Preparing, planning, execution, rehearsals, and table reads, even murder boarding, all revolve around the idea that luck favors the prepared. So be an overprepper.
Pitches:
Very few fully contemplate the context, nature, and substance of a pitch. This situation is familiar to seat-of-your-pantsers and ‘winging it’ers’. It’s also familiar to rinse and repeaters and ‘save as’ers’.
What’s oddest to me is that, for many, pitching is considered a routine, mechanized process. It is akin to Lego building. Maybe, but maybe not. Pitch is, in my view, a much more precise production of narrative. It is engineered to inform, incite, entertain, teach, and demonstrate mastery of the material. This is achieved with an elegant, simple delivery. That can win, trust, belief, confidence and respect from the recipient(s).
I loathe ppt but I love storytelling. I love pitching, and winning is nice but I don’t worry so much about it. Because often we don’t control winning, that stuff is determined by others. Designing pitches for the privilege of using someone’s time, thats the journey I’m into.
Workshops:
One significant issue folks face in the context of ‘familiar to foreign’ is how teams approach workshopping. It is one of the most challenging aspects. Workshops can be awkward and uncomfortable for many, and terrifying for a few.
The overarching concept, often foreign to many, is that a workshop is where work is done. It is a place where ideas are visualized. The focus is on quantity over quality. Divergent creation, exploration of the what ifs of things, then in some we critique, prioritize, empathize, cluster. Argue over how and how much, litigate technologies, debate priorities and more.
This is where the familiar, ‘the way we’ve always done things’ meets the foreign. This ‘completely new way of doing things’ can scare the hell out of people sometimes. But in the preps for workshopping, you can expect some basic human truths. You can relieve folks of the burdens of negative scanning. You can also suspend their disbelief.
The workshop’s preciousness is a missed opportunity. Many people miss the chance to bring to life the ‘familiar to foreign’ transformative experience.
I have seen it many times. Folks come with skepticism and resistance. Then, along the way, serendipity happens. An idea or a post-it, any combination of things said or shared, changes the weather in the room.
The sky of ideas opens up, a rhythm, a shared experience happens. Boom, foreigners become teammates. ‘Foreignness’ begets freedom from the familiar.
Readouts:
Brain dumping a novel worth of content on an unsuspecting and often disconnected audience is overwhelming. It’s like a terribly long regurgitation of known knowns and known unknowns. There is little time spent on unknowable unknowns.
Deliverable vomiting is not useful = Familiar. Curating the most memorable, valuable, and actionable outputs and opportunities = Foreign.
What is most troubling in these cases is that people will vigorously defend their own availability and anchor biases. They often show near-total blind spots to the inherent opportunities in the foreign.
Steering the storytelling sadness away from self-owning a team’s also-ran-ness is some of the most challenging work. The goal is to shift toward a highly engaging, simple, clear, curated goodness. Your results may vary.
Designing Things UX/UI/AiX/CX
When moving from familiar to foreign in designing things, there are some conceptions or misconceptions. Some believe that with the advent of AI, you don’t need design. Others think that AI will do it for you.
Well, again, as it turns out AI is like most things, a tool. A tool in qualified hands is useful in unqualified or under-qualified hands is not useful. In my career, I’ve seen many situations. New tools in the hands of unskilled, unaware, or incapable folks still produced bad pixels.
Bad pixels are not the main problem. It’s the all too familiar refrain that folks knew what they were doing. They claim the tool sucks. No, that is the signal of the now famous story about the Dunning-Kruger effect. As it turns out someone named a thing I had to learn the hard way. The lack of knowledge is not humbling to people who don’t know they don’t know things, it’s emboldening to them.
This is another familiar to foreign problem. When you drive into an area where you are lost, you turn the radio down. Why? Because your brain needs time to think. Instinctively you cut distractions so your brain can process being lost. Being unfamiliar or foreign.
This is important. If I had a nickel for every time I experienced this foreignness, I would not need to work any longer. The reality is many people experience this familiar to foreign scenario. They either ignore it, fake it til they make it, or act like they know something. Sad.
Instead, embrace the foreign state your brain is in. It is a way out of your comfort zone. Some really amazing things can and do happen there. Think briefly about when you were in a foreign situation. You created something you didn’t think you achieve at first. Start with familiar designs. Sketch them out until you start to move. You find yourself in flow, moving toward the foreign.
I has been the single greatest ongoing challenge in my life and career. There is not silver bullet, no easy protip to give. Your own curiosity is a way of working toward the foreign. Deliberate and brutal feedback is also crucial. Clients, teammates all will struggle, you will be misunderstood for a long time. Embrace that foreignness too.
You made it, thank you for the gift of your time making it down here. I hope you will find your way to the foreign from the familiar. As always, your results will vary and #keepmoving 🦄