Hopping on the Learning Rollercoaster
Here we go! What our first week at AC4D felt like… and what it will probably feel like throughout this 9-month learning rollercoaster.
When our cohort of eight started at AC4D this week, I didn’t really know what to expect. I knew the topics we’d be covering, and I knew I was excited – excited to learn things by doing, doing, doing (...and doing, doing, doing some more), meet people I could connect with and learn from, and challenge myself in new ways. As we wrap up our orientation, here are some things that I was reminded of this week:
Knowing what a growth mindset is, is entirely different than truly adopting one
Design is messy because real life is messy
Choose people over process when hitting roadblocks as a team
Practicing a Growth Mindset
Having been in the learning and development space for awhile, as well as playing the role of manager and coach in different jobs, I was pretty familiar with Carol Dweck’s concept of growth mindset. In short, growth mindset is the belief that our skills and behavior aren’t fixed, and that if we put something new into regular practice, we’ll eventually become better at it. Not super revolutionary when you think about it, but it’s way easier said than done.
Growth mindset influences how we deal with the challenges and discomfort that come with learning (especially as adults, when many of us tend to be a bit more resistant or stubborn about changing our existing habits), and therefore, how effective we are at picking up something new.
This week during orientation, we were put into small groups to experience a design process together, “thrown into the deep end” style – meaning, our facilitators took the design process that we’ll be practicing and refining during our time at AC4D and accelerated it, condensing it into five, jam-packed days.
Unsurprisingly, I found myself feeling scattered, rushed, uncomfortable, confused, and frustrated in different moments throughout the past week, especially when it came to understanding how my two teammates’ different ways of communicating and collaborating came into play. As we weren’t given a lot of time to get to know each other before working on our assignments together, this likely compounded some of the discomfort and frustration I experienced.
However, we’re more likely to learn and gain insight from experiences that elicit strong emotions from us, particularly when those experiences are painful, so reminding myself to maintain a growth mindset when things got a little challenging proved to be helpful. It was a great reminder to trust the process, do my best to exercise patience (with myself and others), and be open to what unfolds. It was also a great reminder that knowing what a concept like growth mindset is and how to describe it doesn’t necessarily mean we know how to demonstrate it – and that being willing to engage in practice is the most important part, because that’s when we can understand it best.
Messiness in Design Reflects the Messiness in Life
Going into AC4D, I was aware that design was messy. As we went through the different steps of the design process, that became even more apparent (and yes, at times annoying). While I’ve gotten fairly comfortable with adapting in new environments and navigating through ambiguity, that doesn’t mean I enjoy these things, especially in the moment. I’m constantly trying to make sense of what I’m experiencing, often seeking clarity (where there may be none), creating structure where I can, and wanting more time to process and connect the dots.
Diving into the design process with my fellow classmates, the “dots” weren’t always clear to us. I wondered whether this was by design (how meta!) or just inherently part of the process. There were moments when I felt like dots were missing entirely. As frustrating as this was at times, I compared the messiness I was experiencing to the messiness in the real world and reasoned that the process was simply mirroring what we all go through in our personal and professional lives. There are many ways to approach tackling the problems we’re faced with, and no matter what approach we take, the messiness is pretty inevitable. As designers, we’ll be designing things for real people with beautifully complex, nuanced stories and lives, so it’s no surprise that design is messy, because life is messy.
People > Process
This past week has also reinforced to me the value of simply listening to people’s experiences and stories in the design journey, and I don’t just mean the audiences I’m designing for. Design is rarely a solo adventure, and to me, a critical part of successfully designing a product, service, policy, or system is how effective I am at collaborating with others.
This is, of course, not unique to the field of design. Collaborating with others in our work and our jobs is just a part of the process. But how many of us genuinely invest in establishing some level of trust with those we work with, and how might a product (or service, policy, or system) end up even better if we gave greater thought and care into balancing building trust with our collaborators with the process of doing the work together?
I mentioned earlier that I experienced some discomfort this past week upon being thrown into new challenges with new people I hadn’t really gotten to know beforehand. There were times when I noticed my own frustration getting in the way of exercising patience with others, or when I was more focused on getting to the goal than inviting others to talk things through with me, and when this happened, I did my best to slow down and refocus my attention on the dynamics and energy within my group. Yes, it felt a little messy and uncomfortable, but in the end, we always arrived at a greater place of understanding and, I think (I hope!) trust. This is something I’m still working on, and will continue to work on beyond AC4D. In the meantime, I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do this with the seven other designers-in-training over the course of our program.
To sum it up, what the past week highlighted for me is that design doesn’t happen in a neat, straight line because our lives don’t happen that way. And when I’m experiencing tension, whether internal or external, connecting with people with intention will consistently bring me back to where I need to be – a place where empathy, creativity, and growth can thrive, despite being in the thick of a little chaos, confusion, and uncertainty.
