Perceptual Positions and How to Use Them in Design
Hello everyone! My name is Alexander Anikeev, and I am a senior digital product designer at X5 Tech.
I’m a big fan of psychology, and besides that I love design. I believe there are many underlying problems at the intersection of these disciplines, one of which I will discuss in my article. It seems to me that my discourse and insights on the application of the Perceptual Positions theory can help find new facets of the product design process and structure our knowledge.
The origins of concept
The concept of “perceptual position” was first formulated by John Grinder and Judith DeLozier in 1987 when they were rethinking various phenomena that they observed in their practice.
For instance, they noticed that a race car driver expands his personal perception of himself during the race, identifying himself with his car. By the way, this is not connected with getting pleasure from the process: for example, a blind person perceives his cane as part of himself. And vice versa: people who survived a traumatic experience often describe the accident in the opposite way — from the position of an observer, without associating themselves with what happened.
Thus, positions of perception are certain positions of the perceiving individual in relation to what he or she perceives. In other words, these are the points of view, attitude or perspective, with which a person perceives something in life, and the states associated with such perception.
There are three basic and two additional perceptual positions. Let’s examine each of them separately and try to correlate them with the product design process.
Basic positions
The first perceptual position, which is basically your own viewpoint. That is, when an individual looks at everything with his own eyes and associates it with his or her inner world. Being in the first position, a person does not take into account the points of view and opinions of others.
It can be compared to a stage in the design process when the designer, based on his expert opinion, looks for solutions to the problem, creates new variants and build hypotheses.
The second perceptual position is when a person puts himself in the place of another one and perceives the situation from his position and point of view. He makes an effort to feel something exactly the way the other person would feel it.
This stage closely resembles the stage of conducting research, when the designer needs to understand for whom the product is being created or the script is being written.
Who is that person? What are his goals? What needs does he want to satisfy? What are the motivations behind his actions? What does he fear and want to avoid? Trying to answer these questions, the designer enters into direct communication with representatives of the target audience, and conducts interviews and surveys.
Having received these answers, the designer selects the most appropriate hypotheses formulated at the initial stage of the design process. Now with these data to build on, it’s important to look at the product with the eyes of the users, making adjustments based on their pain and motivation to help achieve their goals and satisfy their needs.
This stage allows designers to build user journey maps, which are offered as the main ones for the next stage — verification. The verification stage is based on the third perceptual position of perception.
The third perceptual position is the one of neutral observer. It implies the complete abstraction of a person from the process in which he is involved. He is watching what is happening as if from the outside. This position is good since it makes it possible to behave and assess situation as unbiased as possible.
In this case, the designer offers his solutions to the user, placing him in context and providing him with a task, for example, in the form of a scripted challenge. He observes the process of interaction with the product, getting feedback represented as conclusions on the obstacles to achieving the goal.
Additional positions
The fourth perceptual position is a view of something from the standpoint of some system. In terms of our design process, this position can be applied at all stages, since it articulates restrictions.
For instance, a business analyst evaluates the requirements and goals of the business, a system analyst tracks the requirements and limitations of the system, software developers deal with the requirements and restrictions of their software environment, copywriters analyse the rules of communication with users, etc. All these are the positions of systems that affect the product and its use scenarios.
From a more general point of view, there are much more systems, and the fourth position is way more comprehensive. For example, the product is affected by the legislation of those countries in which it will operate. There may be socio-cultural aspects, religious, moral and ethical aspects, specific to a particular region or group of users.
The fifth perpetual position. In it, a person perceives what is happening in terms of benefit and value for others. In this position, participation in the lives of other people, caring for them are especially expressed. The main prerequisite here is the feeling of a satisfied need for self-realization and the aspect of bringing benefits to others.
Does the product benefit people? Does it make it easier and cheaper for them to buy food, arrange delivery, call a taxi, find a gift, watch a movie? Has it helped a person, who believed the service?
In this position, it is important for the designer to use metrics. It is the numbers that will give an answer to whether the product is beneficial to a user or not.
What share of users perform the desired actions? How long does it take them to do so? How many users are buying goods? How many of them renew their subscription? How many of your customers are churning away? How many of them come back? The list of exact questions is determined by the metrics of the specific product. If the product is useful, people use it and see value in it — this will be reflected in the statistics.
How to develop the perceptual skill?
The best approach is practice.
To develop the first perceptual position, you need to learn to be associated with your emotions, feelings and experiences. In other words, it’s about having access to your own values. Let me explain my point: a person can be aware of his values and be guided by them in making decisions, or act intuitively. It is best to articulate these values through self-reflection or through work with an expert. Values are expressed, among other things, in the principles that guide the designer in his work.
To master the second perceptual position, you have to be able to present yourself as someone else. A key element in this case will be the development of empathy, without which it is impossible to achieve the most complete and nonjudgmental perception of another person.
For example, I practice the following technique: when rereading portraits of people or notes of in-depth interviews, I try to imagine myself in the place of that person, immerse myself in his inner world, imagine his daily routine, thoughts, feelings, and then, as if through his eyes, look at my current work. This exercise seems to be quite useful to me.
To improve the third-position skills it is necessary to train the ability to observe the whole process from a distance, without being emotionally involved in it.
For the fourth position, it is important to study the influencing systems, their limitations, requirements, criteria, etc. For instance, the designer can dive deeper into the business goals of the product, the strategy and values of the company, or study some technical aspects.
The fifth position is developed by cultivating a sincere desire to be useful. In product work, this refers to our ability to work out product metrics, track them, and formulate product hypotheses.
It is important that the metrics track not only the achievement of business indicators, but also show a picture of users’ satisfaction and their desire to continue using the product.
Example
Let us match up one of perceptual positions to such a research method as an in-depth interview.
We talk to members of a predefined group within the target audience, asking them to answer questions about how they usually perform some action. We give them the opportunity to talk about it widely and in detail, direct their attention to the feelings that they experience, ask them to articulate their thoughts that are born in the process. We try to understand their motives, values, obstacles, and the time when these obstacles arise, etc.
The interview is recorded on video and, in the end, in addition to brief conclusions, it can generate a number of artifacts, such as personality self-portraits, jobs to be done, etc.
Then, we can leverage this understanding of the users that we gained during the study as well as all those insights and artifacts, to put ourselves in their place when designing our next scenario. This is an example of using the second perceptual position.
Conclusion
If you look at product design through the prism of the Perceptual Positions theory, you will notice that they fit well and complement each other. The whole arsenal of design methods is somehow connected with the use of one or more perceptual positions.
Is it possible to build a product without applying any of these positions? Yes, but this will bluntly affect its quality.
Without leveraging our expertise, without empathy to users, without testing solutions or considering the systems limitations, we will inevitably make mistakes. Without aspire to drive customer value, we will not make a product with a long and happy life cycle.
We should look at the product from various dimensions, avoiding a one-sided approach to the tasks it is designed for. One way to do so is to use perceptual positions.
I hope the article was useful to you. I would be glad to read your comments.
