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I just turned 26. 

My birthday week typically means a post filled with reflections on the year just passed. In previous years (and it is years now) I’ve written about what I’ve learned, what I’ve accomplished, and an update on what I’ve been doing on this blog. It’s been something a personal time capsule.

I read back through last year’s piece and I realised perhaps not that much on the surface has changed.

I’ve still been growing my illustration practice. I’ve still been working on that same project at work and been improving so much as a user researcher. I’ve still been trying to look after myself, to eat well and move around as much as I can.

But I feel like I’m on the cusp of a huge internal shift.

I think the last few years have been about getting myself, personally, to a place of stability. I needed to feel like I was on solid ground. 

Now those base needs have been taken care of somewhat, I’ve started to look beyond myself. In particular, I’ve been reflecting on what my research and design practice could do and the kinds of work I ultimately want to be making.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to start changing up my online ‘branding’ for the want of a better word so it’s more in line with how I talk about what I do and how I want to present myself. If I’m honest, I’m a little embarrassed when colleagues find my portfolio and even this blog to some extent. That’s not a great feeling. 

But more importantly I have aims much bigger than these digital walls for what my work might be able to do. In order to articulate that direction of travel and to keep me on course, I created a short manifesto for my work going forward that I can use as a north star.

Ultimately, right now, I think I want to work towards work that reframes the narratives we have around society and technology/the designed world with an aim to reshape the power structures in those relationships.

I will pursue a research, design and visual practice that:

  • Is critical of existing power structures – while I may not get to choose every project I get to work on I want to be driven by my conscience and critical of who benefits directly and indirectly from the research I do and the interventions I’m involved in. I want my research to challenge those power structures and raise questions not only for myself but for others about who has control in each situation, including my own role as an author when it comes to research.

  • Is accessible and transparent – the workings behind certain pieces of design and technology are hidden behind opacity or within overwhelming amounts of information in order to create unequal power structures. I want my work to be challenge-able and so accessible and inclusive. That means a transparency within my ways of working, although simple transparency in every case may not be enough.

  • Is holistically sustainable – the work I make should be mindful of the environment it exists in physical and social. It should not cause that environment harm, wherever possible. 

  • Is collaborative – I believe in the right to reply to research and I’ve seen first hand the power of co-design as an approach and it’s something I want to pursue further. A collaborative approach appears, to me, to be the only way to affect true mutually beneficial social change. It also begins to shift away from the idea of passive disempowered users of services and to elevate voices that aren’t my own.

  • Is a challenge to the boundaries of my understanding – our world views and the theories we apply to what we experience are necessarily limited. While I will never unmake my inherent biases, I want to pursue work in a way that makes me conscious of those biases and systems and questions the impact they have on my understanding of the world, and so the content of my work.

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Whenever I wanted something when I was little I would make it. Crafting and building things was all about doing things for myself. I was focused on the outcome but also on having something that kept my weird little introverted only-child self enthralled.

 

I’ve lost that a bit as I’ve grown older, busier, more independent in other ways.

 

It’s something I’ve been missing. Making things for an audience has kept me accountable to keep pushing my illustration, but I think only making things with someone else directly or inadvertently in mind has left me feeling empty with my practice. 

 

I’ve tried to just start making things for fun but without a clear project, it’s easily fallen by the wayside to work for clients or visible work for this blog.

 

That was until watching hours of Bon Apetit’s Gourmet Makes reminded me of the child in me who loved to make homemade versions of what she’d seen polished and shiny out in the real world, even if it was half cobbled together.

Ever since I started my job as a design researcher, I’ve found myself envious of the stickers that seem to adorn the well beaten macbooks of my colleagues.

 

Adorning your laptop seems to be a right of passage. It always seemed to me that it would take a certain kind of confidence to display a message or an identity so prominently everyday. (Note: this is why I don’t commit to slogan t-shirts). It also seems to be a right of passage because I don’t know how these stickers seem to magically find their way into people’s hands.

 

Recently, I’ve been feeling a little bit of that confidence in the values I want to embody and the version of myself I want to work towards being. So, I felt like it was time I earned my stickers.

 

Or rather, it was time I embraced my inner child and made them.

 

In the spirit of embracing my inner child I took inspiration from my 15 year old self who covered (some may say vandalised) one side of a desk in the art room I spent every lunch in with apple stickers. It was my way of claiming a sense of belonging. Plus, fruit stickers are the coolest.

So I did a little bit of research into vintage fruit stickers, then just got drawing. I used the basic oval and pull tab shapes as a basis then filled them with things that meant something to me. Largely, I worked around two themes being a quiet soul and design research. There not universal themes. As I mentioned in my last post there might not be all that many introverted user researchers out there. But these were stickers for and about me so I kept it personal. 

 

I now have my own fruit inspired stickers, which I’m using to mark out my space of belonging even if I only have a hot desk.

 

It felt really good to make something just for myself. I couldn’t stop ruffling through the sheets when they came in the post. They’re now proudly displayed on my own well beaten macbook and my notebook, and they’ll probably make it onto any new office supplies I get. If there’s one thing I’ve learned hot desking across offices, if you don’t mark your charger it will be borrowed, never to be returned.

 

I think making these stickers was a bit of a turning point for me. I’ve talked a big talk about making work for myself in the past, but never really followed through. But the joy I got out of having something I had made and wanted to use was so huge that I’m prepared to say no to other people and put the things I want to make first. 

 

I have another couple of projects in the works as well as a big overhaul of my online ‘branding’ for the want of a better term. So I’m hoping to share a few more of these kinds of posts soon.

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Every day I get up and I go to work as a design researcher. I enjoy my work and I’m getting better at every day. But I have been told a number of times by other researchers, by designers, by well meaning by standers, that user research is a job for extroverts. I most certainly am not an extrovert.

 

Well, let me rephrase that. I’ve been told more times than I can count that it’s not a job for introverts. No one ever says a thing is for extroverts, but they are happy to exclude introverts with the assumption the norm is extroversion.

 

They see introverts as shy and awkward and antisocial. I can certainly all of those things. You can be shy and an introvert without a doubt. But that’s not what it means to be an introvert.

 

As Susan Cain, author of Quiet says, there are lots of definitions of what it actually means to be more on the introverted side of the spectrum, and it is a spectrum. But one that she seems to go back to, along with the idea of where we get our energy is “‘people who prefer quieter, more minimally stimulating environments.’ The key is about stimulation: extroverts feel at their best and crave a high degree of stimulation. For introverts, the optimal zone is much lower.”

But even that definition might seem to suggest that user research isn’t for the introvert at heart. User, or design, research in its current format involves a lot of ethnography, of speaking to strangers, of new environments, of absorbing stimulation. It’s a people and adventure job.

It’s also a job that’s about listening and paying attention to the people you’re researching with. The natural quietness of introverts is usually read as shyness, which I can understand and is probably sometimes the case. But that potentially slightly awkward style is often because “introverts want to take in what you’re saying, think about it and then respond, while extroverts want to engage in a back-and-forth.” While building a back-and-forth rapport with participants to make them comfortable is hugely important, research relies on being quiet and taking in what you’re being told or shown

 

Research also relies on you picking up on a whole range of details. Introverts are often highly sensitive people, which means you pick up on everything around you from sounds to sights to smells. That’s why they’re often overwhelmed or have to quietly process in stimulating scenarios. That’s also why if you leave an introvert in a research session and give them time to process what they’ve just been part of they can pick up on details other people might have missed. This might come at the cost of them not saying as much, but having someone who can watch body language in the room is never a negative.

 

When you’re doing research you need to be able to relate to and work with all kinds of people. Somewhere between 16 and 50 percent (I know that’s a big range) of people are introverts. So you’re bound to meet a few when you’re out and about doing research. When you’re an introvert, I think it’s sometimes easier to notice the signs that someone else is on your quiet wavelength and adjust your style to suit. Plus, I always like to start any co-design sessions with some time for people to do some silent and solo work where there’s time to write answers down, in part because that’s what I like to do.

 

While a lot of what’s visible about research from the outside is the fieldwork, fieldwork is very rarely valuable without careful consideration and analysis. That’s something introverts are notoriously good at. We don’t make quick decisions and we’re not bold, but we are contemplative and able to weigh up a whole range of information, which is key to getting insights out of the data you get from fieldwork. 

 

Those are just some of the ways that introverts, contrary to popular opinion, can make great user researchers. But there are some things you need to do to be able to thrive as an introvert in a supposedly extroverted role.

 

Build in time for reflection. This is the big one. I’ve realised that I can’t process a session as quickly as my colleagues might like. I’ll be hounded with ‘how did it goes’ as soon as I get back to the office. I am forever grateful that they’re excited to hear about what we’ve found. But for me to share valuable insights I need some time alone. So now, I schedule in feedback sessions (close to but not immediately after) research. That way everyone knows they’ll hear about what happened but I can take time to process.

 

Understand that not everyone will work in the same way as you. When out researching with more extroverted colleagues, I’ve often found myself steamrollered. I leave a few seconds after someone has spoken to make sure they’re done and to let me formulate a meaningful question based on what they’ve shared. Other people aren’t so comfortable with that silence. If that happens to you, you can either just accept it and spend your energy observing or try to explain your style before setting out. Either way know you’re doing valuable work.

 

Just because everyone else likes to brianstorm doesn’t mean you have to be in a whirlwind. I’m not great at big group exercises where everyone is talking. My sensitive brain is taking in a lot of information and I can’t process it quickly enough. Plus, I genuinely enjoy listening. But often in design teams decisions get made in groupthink sessions. As a researcher, your job is often to be the voice of the user in the room to feedback insights. If you’re just listening, your team don’t get the value of that advocacy. So, what I’ve found works for me is to spend a little time beforehand thinking about the key points and quotes from the people I’ve spent time with.

 

Even with those caveats, I know that user research isn’t a job for all introverts, just like it’s not a job for all extroverts. If you find meeting new people particularly taxing, there are so many other brilliant roles for you my quiet friends.

 

Design research hits a sweet spot for me. I’m fascinated by people but I do often find big social interactions tiring and I’m not a big personality. But with research I get to meet so many fascinating people. I get often get to talk to them about things they’re passionate about, we get straight to the good stuff, it’s not small talk. I get to people watch. I get to listen. I get to have this already defined neutral role in a conversation. I get to spend time with people one on one. I get to do all of that, then consider my findings and affect real change. 

 

That’s what I’m thinking everyday when I wake up to go to work, not that I’m not the extroverted people person I’m sometimes expected to be.

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It’s been such a long time since I caught you up with what I’m reading. There were so many brilliant potential picks for this month’s book club, because my summer has had a plentiful harvest of paperbacks. Stand outs have included My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent, which is worth all of the hype because I devoured it in about 2 days, Solitude by Michael Harris, which is one of the best books I’ve read recently about pursuing moments of a solitary life, and Hello World by Hannah Fry, which is a fascinating and accessible guide to some of the algorithms that shape our modern world.

 

But, today I want to write about Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli and translated by Christina MacSweeney. It’s a short book that I picked up, almost at random, off someone else’s shelf and that I may not have found otherwise. So I wanted to display it on my digital bookshelf, which is how I see this book club, so you might be a little more inclined to pick it up too.

 

Faces in the Crowd weaves between three stories. “In Mexico City, a young mother is writing a novel of her days as a translator living in New York. In Harlem, a translator is desperate to publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet. And in Philadelphia, Gilberto Owen recalls his friendship with Lorca, and the young woman he saw in the windows of passing trains.” 

 

Each tale is layered on top of the other creating what the mother calls a “vertical narrative”. The layers are short fragments which could be anything from a line to a page long, which give the story an unsettling unstable position of narration. Stories disintegrate and disappear into one another. 

 

While Owen and the younger translator are characters in their own right, they also appear as constructions by the mother as she writes. At one point, the unnamed translator—who is a younger version of the mother and also a character in the mother’s novel—talks about her acts of forgery to an old man who asks: “So what does it matter if he [Gilberto Owen] never met Lorca or saw Duke Ellington play?” “It doesn’t, I’m just saying he could have,” the translator says. “Exactly,” replies the old man, “and that’s what matters.”

 

So as much as this is a book about literature and translation and storytelling, it’s also about how we fabricate ourselves and the lives of those we encounter. The novel is filled with glances across packed metro stations, where characters see faces in a crowd and turn them from mere faces into people who feel so well fictionalised they might just be real. They tell the stories that they want to hear, the stories that fit with their own personal narratives.

For this alternative cover, I wanted the layered text to mirror the layered narrative surrounded by individual fragments.

The outcome is something so surreal but at once so close to how we actually encounter the world. How we exist in our own heads is different to how we exist in the minds of others and vice versa. We are constantly retelling our own narratives in fragments, picking up memories, changing them slightly each time we do, and relating them to our present.

 

Faces in the Crowd is a challenging read. It can be heard to follow in places and it pushes you to add your own interpretations and fabrications into your reading. It’s probably not going to be a big beach side read. But if you’re prepared to work with Luiselli, there’s some real magic to be made in this one.

 

SOME QUESTIONS TO PONDER AS YOU READ…

  • As the book progresses, how do you know which storyline you’re in? Does it matter?
  • What are the points of similarity between the narrator and Owen? Where do they merge?
  • What is fact and what is fiction? How can you tell? Is your perception of the fabrication the same as the narrator’s?
  • What impact does telling the story in such fragments have on your perception of the told and untold aspects of the narrator’s life?
  • Have you ever caught a glimpse of someone in a crowd who you thought was someone else?

 

IF YOU WANT SOME FURTHER READING TRY…

  • The Observer heralds Luisella as an exciting female voice joining a new wave of Lating American authors
  • The Rumpus discusses Faces in the Crowd as a “haunted novel” filled with fragments of ghosts
  • Stephen Piccarella writing for Electric Lit writes that “it is here in these spaces that open at the end of the novel that the writing of fiction really begins”

 

IF YOU WANT MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS HAVE A LOOK AT…

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How do you choose what to watch, read, listen to, engage with next? 

 

I’m guessing, for at least one of those, you rely on what’s recommended to you online, whether you do that consciously or unconsciously. Recently, I realised quite how much of the media I engage with is being served up to me by algorithms and group decision making. I am one with my Netflix recommendations. I’m constantly checking in with my Spotify Discover Weekly Playlist. I read what I find shared and then promoted to me on Twitter or what comes through my Pocket recommendations. 

 

The last 6 months for me have been a time for introspection. It feels like I’ve hit a stable place and I’m looking at where I go next. In doing that horizon scanning, I’ve been trying to hone in on my own sense of taste.

 

In order to refine your palate you need to try a huge variety of whatever it is you’re interested in. You have to know what you dislike as much as you need to know what you like. You have to immerse yourself and grow and come out the other end. We do this in the extreme when we’re teenagers, trying on different hats (sometimes literally) and finding out a bit about who we are while we realise we don’t have the bone structure for a beret. But we never stop, or at least we shouldn’t.

 

As much as I feel like I’ve hit a stable plateau in my life, I also feel like the menu my palate has been served in the past year or so has become very safe. I know what I like: I like procedural shows, I like clever dramas where I don’t think anyone’s a good person, I like action movies, I like subtle yet feeling illustrations, I like Maggie Rogers. But I don’t think my taste has been pushed. I’ve not fallen in love with anything new.

 

Perhaps it’s just my sense of taste refining as I get older. Or, perhaps, it’s got something to do with the algorithms I’m relying upon to help me order.

 

Before we start discussing algorithms, I think it’s worth spending a little while getting to grips with what we’re talking about, because it’s a term that’s thrown about a whole lot without much context. Hannah Fry, in her brilliant book Hello World, explains how algorithms are just a series of logical instructions that show step by step how to achieve a specific goal. But when we say algorithm, because of their common usage now, we’re usually talking about the mathematical ones that work in computer code to crunch calculations and follow those instructions to achieve their goals.

 

Fry very breaks down the big groups of algorithm by the kinds of goals they’re given. This has been the easiest way I’ve found of thinking about what’s going on on the other side of the services I use. Fry’s four categories of actions are:

  1. Prioritisation – ranking one thing over an other (you’ll like this one best)
  2. Classification – putting things into categories (you’ll like this because you’re x kind of person)
  3. Association – finding and marking relationships between things (you’ll like this because it’s linked to something else you’ve liked)
  4. Filtering – isolating what’s important (you won’t like these but you will like these, and I’ll only show the ones you like)

 

The algorithms at work in most of the services I mentioned at the start of this post rely on a mixture of all four of these actions with the aim of keeping users engaged with, and so loyal to, their service for as long as possible. Their aim isn’t to expand your taste, it’s to keep you eating. The best way for them to do that is to rely on what you have liked in the past and keep serving you things that you’ll find edible. 

Now that certainly has its pros and its cons. 

 

In the pro column, you’ve got the fact that it saves you, most of the time, from things you’ll just outright hate AKA no horror movies for me. By filtering out what it presumes are the definite nos it saves you precious browsing time as well as nightmares. 

 

In the con column, there are more than a few limitations. These algorithms learn from what we’ve liked in the past and what people similar to us have liked too. But what happens if they’ve got what you like wrong? What if you’ve just gone through a phase of being obsessed with one thing, but now you’re a bit over it? What about those hidden gems that you stumble upon that ‘aren’t your type on paper’? What about those things you’d definitely love but aren’t part of the service’s catalogue? What about if your tastes have evolved? For some reason as a child I hated tea but now I have at least 4 cups a day, if I only trusted algorithms how would I have refound that love? There’s also a question of how do you become an individual in a sea of grouped recommendations? How do you develop your own personal taste? Then there’s a whole bunch of ways those personal tastes may be modified when sharing your opinions for algorithms and people on social networks, but let’s just tackle one thing at once.

 

As ever, I don’t have a definitive conclusion for what we should do next. But the one thing I do know is that if I want to truly develop a sense of my own palate, I need to step away from the algorithms. That means accepting three basic principles:

 

  1. You have to get outside – look for recommendations outside of the web. I’m going to be asking friends about what they’ve enjoying more. I’m also just going to get outside and trust my eyes and my ears.
  2. You have to take risks – there’s going to be stuff you don’t like. Without the “is it edible?” filter there are going to be some sour grapes in the mix, but that’s part of the process. I’m going to have to bite into things that might be awful and see how it goes.
  3. You have to work for it – accept that this way is slower. I’ve gotten used to the ease of trusting recommendations and not having to search them out, but testing your palate takes time and work.

 

There’s nothing wrong with a recommendation to cut down on the hundreds of hours searching for a show, and the more horror trailers I can avoid when I’m browsing late at night the better. But what about the unexpected hidden gems? You have to dig for those not just in the third page of your google search results but out in the real world.