Know nothing to know more.

“You know too much.”

Twice in the past month, I have been told this by a person whose expertise and intelligence I respect. Once it was by an engineering graduate student who was talented enough to be enrolled at Stanford from overseas. Once it was by an expert designer and design educator who teaches at the d.school.

They didn’t mean it as a compliment.

Both people said this to me during my first foray into ethnographic research at the d.school, while I was completing “Design Project 1” — a design sprint the social innovation fellows completed in two weeks to experience and understand the basic steps of the design process. My two “critics” were gently showing me that despite my efforts to dwell in empathy, to embrace ambiguity, to keep my interview questions open-ended in order to elicit people’s deep stories — I was still guiding the people I was interviewing toward conclusions and analyses that weren’t theirs.

They were mine.

I was stunned. I have read Margaret Mead and pursued undergraduate research in social linguistics, which drew directly from anthropology. I have been a journalist. I have worked in international development. I have trained people in interest-based conflict management, which is all about listening without judgment in order to understand people’s inner motivations. My employees have repeatedly reported in anonymous surveys that I’m a good listener. I always thought I was naturally good at ethnographic research.

It turns out I was wrong.

DP1 and the d.school experience have challenged me to practice two skills critical for good design. (1) Valuing the individual’s experience as an important starting point for understanding complex, systems-level challenges; and (2) translating that appreciation into true empathy with full listening and observation. Until now I thought I knew how to stay open and curious during design research. But because I am so used to working at the systems level, it appears my brain over time has gotten into the habit of analyzing and making strategic connections even when I don’t want it to. While my interviewee is talking, my mind is leaping forward with a strategic view of how this individual case either confirms or challenges system-level patterns. My interview questions follow MY thoughts, not what the person in front of my is actually saying. I ask questions that pursue the connections I am seeing, pathing the conversation in the direction I am interested in pursuing.

I silence the voice of the person I am interviewing.

This of course is the opposite of what I am trying to do — and what we all need to do — in human centered design. During the research phase of any design project, we need to suspend our own ideas about what things mean and how one person’s experience connects to broader systems. We need to silence our own brains and voices in order to truly listen and allow the voices of those we are serving and studying to emerge in their unadulterated authenticity. These voices are complex and contradictory; messy and meandering; poignant and poetic. The challenge is to follow where the humans we are studying take us — and not to ignore their voices in favor of our supposed “expertise.” Their experience is what matters — not ours.

I am learning to still my own mind in order to become more mindful. I am learning to be more present to this person I am listening to, more observant of her environment, more empathic to his emotions. As a designer, this stillness enables me to dig deeper, see more clearly, and understand with greater precision. From the insights this gives me, I can develop ideas that are creative, intuitive and transformative.

I can design if I create the stillness required to listen.