“I think, I wonder”
One evening,
Me: Isn’t the daal delicious?
Friend: Yes, my mom makes something similar but she also adds coconut.
(My brain: ‘Why does the same daal have so many versions?’, ‘Why do we enjoy eating?’, ‘What triggers our appetite?’…)
This happens all the time! There is an instant how and why to everything I come across.
As a designer, I am learning to embrace ambiguity, but I continue to ask questions on different levels. It’s usually related to behaviors that I observe or emotions that I experience.
I often wonder, what it would be like to make sense of the many layers of information around me? Most days, I push myself to dig deeper, reason with things- then, I read. On one such day, I came across Christian Madsbjerg’s book Sensemaking. What caught my eye was the title — ‘What Makes Human Intelligence Essential in the Age of the Algorithm’.
This book was quite engaging, with tonnes of information to process. Not even a single page has gone by without me highlighting something Madsbjerg explained, each paragraph triggered some thought.
Sensemaking introduced me to the complex yet beautiful world of humanities- the world of plays, paintings, political treatises and the value of cultural inquiry. It made me ponder on their relevance in today’s technologically driven world.
The author nudges us to explore worlds that are different from our own. But what are these ‘worlds’? He writes, when we are studying Chinese architecture, Indian history, or the philosophy of the Sufis, we explore their culture and get an understanding of people in complex social contexts. By letting go-just a little bit of our biases, we get a deeper understanding of our worlds and form a genuine perspective.
He writes,
“With sensemaking, we use human intelligence to develop a sensitivity towards meaningful differences — what matters to other people as well as to ourselves.”
“Experiences with the humanities teach us how to imagine other worlds. Because when we can fully imagine other worlds — using cultural knowledge and explanations for our human experience — we inevitably develop a more acute perspective on our own world.”
“We are all of us, situated in a context. If we are to understand human behaviour, then we must understand context, an argument for the holistic versus the atomized.”
My favorite part of this book is when Madsbjerg explains feelings as subjective knowledge, Thick Data- Not Just Thin Data.
“When a person experiences something belonging to the realm of the senses, it can only be accepted as true knowledge for them in that moment… When someone is at a ballgame and they see everyone around them eating a hot dog, they are much more likely to say, “I am hungry.” This type of knowledge that happens in between the subjective and the objective. It is knowledge about the world we share, and it characterizes much of what makes thick data so powerful.”
Sensemaking brings back the focus to the human factor, everything ties down to what we are, where we are and what we feel. I believe we could practice sensemaking when we perceive everything as a whole, not in isolation and understand the interconnectedness.
I’m starting to wonder, what if I could explore our world through sociology, philosophy or literature? If I could describe things as they actually appear and not as I think they should appear, maybe it would add more value to the experiences I design.
How can I leverage my human intelligence to cultivate such perspectives and make sense of the world?
To do this I have to ‘escape the zoo and go out and observe life on the savannah.’
What to explore next- ‘How can the same daal have so many versions?’
