Questioning and Thinking by Debra Satterfield
Experience design has greatly expanded the definition of what it means to be a designer. For me it was liberating to know that it’s ok to design everything. It reminds me of Howard Gardner’s concept of the multi-disciplinarian. But, Gardner goes on to make the point that very few people dedicate themselves so thoroughly to more than one discipline to every really make it to the point of thinking in more than one domain.
Ironically, we never really question how we think…
Often times, we don’t truly realize how much we have been molded by the prevailing thought processes of our disciplines. This is constantly at the core of teaching experience design to a mixed class of engineers and designers.
On the surface we seem very similar, similar goals, and often, similar outcomes…
But the devil truly is in the details. I have learned that I have to teach within the thinking paradigm of each student… at least for awhile. When researching education theories, I read that in order for a student to learn information you have to understand and adequately address their previous knowledge. You need to know if any previous knowledge will conflict with the new information. For instance, when you teach a child to count they learn that numbers have ordinal values. Then later, you try to teach fractions. And the trouble begins… Your student knows that 4 is bigger than 3, but mentally has a conflict when you say that 1/3 is greater than 1/4. And unless you confront this seemingly conflicting set of facts, many children will be confused for years.
The same is true for my students from different disciplines. Often times our ways of thinking are at odds with each other. But I have found, that if you can trust people from other disciplines and learn to appreciate their differences, much can be gained. And we can all learn from the experience.
When designing for healthcare, we need to learn to embrace the differences in each of us in order to see things from a new perspective.
Well said Debra. I envision Care Design as a discipline for studing and leveraging our differences when it comes to health so that we can maximize outcomes and the care experience.
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