Max · Human Experience Design

Building a product, be it digital or physical is not easy.

You do your best to map out all the use cases. Then you move on to corner cases if you're a decent designer. QA hands you a few as well. You have all the bases covered, right?

But nothing will ever beat real-life testing of your product. The insights that you gather often raise eyebrows, bring value and raise the bar.

Sometimes, a smile.

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I know nothing about your business

And that’s a very good thing!

A lifetime’s worth of experience will not erase a fundamental truth: each human being is unique. What could you say then about the mix of people building a business?

If you see smoke, probably there’s a fire somewhere. Based on observations, filtered by what happened in the past, when we see smoke we come up with a story on where’s the fire, and what we need to put it out.

We look for those we feel are worth to listen to that story: those that have the patience and expertise to connect with our vision and perception.

“The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.”
— Aristotle

I have worked on several digital platforms, with clients from over two dozen countries and industries. I know cues don’t provide clear paths — it’s the details that make the difference we’re after.

Employees, resources, the market, positioning, features, customers, needs, and expectations make up an ecosystem that can’t accommodate conventional solutions.

Of course, I see where they point at. When I spot the patterns I jump and think it’s a slam dunk! Our brains are wired to optimize, in order to reduce the cost of processing.

That’s why, when you hear a problem framed the same way so many times before, you relax and embrace the closest match. I did it plenty of times, as a rookie.

But I know better now.

The symptoms are the first step on the path to discovering the solution with the most desirable outcomes and lowest resource requirements.

So, we walk through a design process to properly identify what’s creaky and actually needs oiling. Sure, it may seem tedious, but it’s illuminating.

I balance experience and enthusiasm by keeping an open mind to the challenges your organization is facing.

Those questions I ask during our first meeting don’t feed my curiosity, and my answers might not feed yours.

At the risk of irritating you by asking “Why is that?”, I refrain from blurting out recipes, and plug into your matrix.

Because my job is not to know, it’s to find out.

I talk about keeping an when it comes to in and .

What's the easiest way to disagree with someone?

"They're obviously misinformed. As soon as I share what I know, they will surely change their mind."
Sure, that always works: we're all eating healthy and exercising regularly.

"They're stubborn, a soldier in an army of passionate ideology-driven puppets, refusing to see the truth."
Yup, we all know you hold the absolute version of it. There's no chance they would see you in the same manner.

"I know already, way better than you, what you need", so I won't listen to what you have to say.
You walked in my shoes and know exactly what would make me cherish your contribution, isn't it?

So, what would be the hardest?

We're different: we had different families, friends, schools, cultural contexts as we grew up. I understand that you see issues from a different angle, and your perspective on this was shaped long before this situation. You feel strongly about certain details because you encountered situations that support those feelings. Are you open to consider another angle?

That's what I share with clients when I attempt to discover what's behind the curtain of a certain attitude, perspective or when I attempt to move the focus from the forest of customers to the tree.

The difference is a valuable resource: it starts off as misunderstanding, disagreement but it ends up propelling learning, exploration, change, leading to better for us all. As passionate as we may feel about ours, we'll be able to connect when we agree that the other party may hold a part of the truth.

If you want to make the change you seek, consider telling stories that resonate. Argue on the same frequency. And in order to resonate, listen first. To understand.

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