Professional Approach to Projects and the People Involved — Part 1
The key to enhanced team dynamics
“The role of a designer is to bring people from the unknown to the known with confidence”, is a quote Rachit Shah provided in his interview but also heard in most design schools.
Taking the above statement into consideration, I feel this blog would be more of a reflection on my experience from a design background and a social background and an amalgamation of its intersections in the form of these interviews. For this blog, we were assigned to watch two interviews which were hosted at the New School:
- 2020 Presentation by Rachit Shah about the application of design principles in a social, non-profit setting.
- 2022 Interview with Wilmi Dippenaar on what makes a successful student-NGO partnership
I would like to start with my understanding and opinions from the interview with Wilmi Dippenaar in part 1 of my blog. Wilmi Dippenaar is the director of a non-profit organization the “Seven Passes Initiative” in South Africa. This organization started with a violence prevention initiative but then diversified to multiple areas over the years like the “Parenting for Lifelong Health” program, etc. In this first part, I will try to cover my perspectives on psychology and teambuilding topic.
One of the key points mentioned by Wilmi was to ask the parents and users if they needed any help as long as it was not stigmatized or unaware amongst society. Sometimes, we as testers and developers of the intervention tend to hypothesize and not exactly ask the audience if they require any assistance or an intervention in that matter. Focus on the strengths that can act as the base to build upon.
Another point, we all should remember, especially when we aren’t from the location we are trying to assist, we should be aware of our privileged backgrounds and not force our mindsets and opinions upon the people there. If anything had to develop, it would naturally do so in time on its own. This is particularly important in the case of social and racial justice and consciousness as the people’s situations are very different in each society, we need to be aware of the context and scenario these people are facing. In a way, this applies to not just my team but me as well. Though I was born and brought up in India, it has been over two years since I lived in the country and I was raised in a completely different city in India, with a lot of different issues and circumstances through culture and religion and the bigger picture might have been the same. Hence, I try to keep an open mind and not hypothesize anything. I only try to add some of my strengths about the type of education available, the history, and local and linguistic perspectives to our project.
From my childhood, I was always taught to keep myself grounded and to try to not show any form of hierarchy when speaking to anyone. To respect and treat everyone as equals and not discourage anyone. This was especially useful when helping people in difficult situations and when having to show sensitivity to topics and culture. But though I did follow. this, I feel my flaws lay in open communication, especially within the internal team of us working on this project. I feel since we all came from various backgrounds, we had different opinions and in a way, most of us forgot to openly communicate our thoughts in the assumption the other person knew. But that is something we started to realize around the time of this video and especially after watching Wilmi speak about having no hidden communication, I am trying even more to implement that. Especially since this is the key to trust building.
Another point that Wilmi mentions in the video and that I resonate with is about working on shared values and having a boundary agreement at the very beginning. This will bring in a shared understanding among the people working on this project. Our team did do these but somewhere while being overwhelmed with the amount of communication and work, I feel we kind of lost some of the boundary but needed just a reminder like this to get back on track. Some personal values that Wilmi mentioned were respect, honesty, personal traumas, non-violent communication, no tolerance for discrimination, and having fun.
Having confidentiality also is a key part of the process especially when working with local organizations. Promoting them is great for both parties as they will get recognition and also be able to tell they have worked with others but also keep a good enough boundary line to not invade their privacy. Power dynamics is inevitable to try to not show it as authoritative or all-knowing at least.
Another huge mistake that I, personally, am trying to correct is trying to find better vocabulary. I really shouldn’t be calling them people from underprivileged backgrounds or with traumatizing/broken pasts but try to communicate in an alternative manner. WIlmi opened my eyes on this one as labels can be hurtful and cause more harm than intended. But becoming aware and acknowledging my mistakes would be my first step in the right direction, I guess. Trust will just take more time to get rebuilt the second time around.
Coming to the last part of Wilmi’s talk, she spoke a lot about the importance of having fun. Projects are time-consuming and adding some fun elements will not just lighten the load but also build on the bonds between the people on the team. Having check-ins or just icebreakers can lighten things up for everyone. Exploration and curiosity need the assistance of some creativity. The attitude with which one approaches things says a lot and can make things feel like they come from a place to learn. This can sometimes be surprising that people generally can learn more than expected when entering with an open mind.
With this, I would like to conclude this part of my blog. Though it might not have had too much of a psychological perspective, it helped with the internal team-building structure of our project and all the people involved.
I will continue with a more design-related perspective and more on our project in the next part of the blog: Part 2 — Designing for a Societal Context. There I will explore and reflect on the Rachit Shah Video informed above.
