11.25 // Photography and Human Centered Design

Meet me halfway project | Essay 5

In today’s class we had the pleasure of hearing professor Dylan Vitone speak about his experiences working in photography and building trust.

Dylan spoke in depth about his photography projects over the years, using photography to understand things that didn’t quite make sense to him. He used his photography to tell the stories of the people he met and the parts of those experiences that had the most impact on him.

The human-centered design nature of his photography came from the fact that he would gain inspiration for the shot from his photography subjects or get them to tell him what they wanted — effectively co-designing the moment together.

Source: https://www.dylanvitone.com/pittsburgh

The class was most curious about how Dylan walked up to people who knew nothing about him or his work and somehow allowed him to take photos of them. He pointed the class to a book by Dale Carnegie; How to win friends and influence people. He mentioned that the concepts that he put together should be basic and common sense, but it was useful that it was all in one spot.

The book has six major concepts:

1. Become genuinely interested in other people — we often get so caught up in our niche that we have a hard time bridging conversations. We need to understand what people are into and allow conversations to just happen. Find a blog or radio to follow to expose you to topics beyond school
2. Smile — how we engage, interact and make eye contact makes a big difference. Don’t be insecure
3. Remember that ones name sounds wonderful to them —remembering someone’s name very quickly opens up doors. This is important to people and shows investment into them
4. Be a good listener — recite back and pick up on little things that matter to them
5. Talk in terms of their interests — knowing just a little bit can go a long way. This links to being genuinely interested in others. Knowing how to speak about a broad array of topics is very helpful in relating to others
6. Small talk — access points can be obvious or otherwise through conversations
7. Make other people feel important and do it sincerely

Dylan had a few other additions from his experiences:

1. Pay attention to body language — acknowledge what this means and say why you want to do some probing so that you’re transparent
2. If something is wrong, ask about it — rather than ignoring that someone is upset or angry, address it. Make people feel comfortable by dropping barriers
3. Act like you belong — there can be a level of performance that goes into this confidence
4. Use whatever credentials you have e.g. student/designer — allows it to open up the conversation
5. Call/email ahead and introduce yourself to anyone as high up as possible —with notice, anyone will welcome you
6. Carry sample works — if you’ve worked in an area before, bring that back to show how it’s been used. By sharing your work, you’re sharing who you are — this can also include designs!
7. Photograph ‘fake’ stuff — if you don’t have real client work, you can do mock ups and make them look official, just to show what you do and build confidence with people