Design Research: Mythical Beasts in Your Data

Margaret Atwood said "War is what happens when language fails," and I would add that after language has failed, both sides see nothing but an imaginary beast in the other.  This is true for me and it motivates my tendency towards patient decision.  It has helped me become an excellent listener.

I recall a bizarre moment in my older brother Ian's kitchen.  That day we were in the process of making our grandmother's widely loved ravioli recipe.  It's remarkable that we were in his kitchen making ravioli because, this is a guy who used to attack me on a regular basis.  He was attempting to apologize for years of the torment he put me through.  It was mostly ordinary older brother type stuff, but some of his antics were downright medieval.  It is easily the most conflicted relationship I've ever had in my life.  He told me he was sorry and that he had always just wanted to play with my little brother and I.  The only way he knew how to engage us was to physically attack us.  Almost unbelievable.  My mouth must have dropped wide open when I heard him say that.

Why decide that a person across the table holds true animosity towards you?  It is an easy illusion to believe in.  I think it is better to wait for the person behind the behavior to reveal themselves.  It can be hard to remember that many displays of aggression stem from a desire for love and acceptance.  Some people will claim that they are simply mean...that they just want to watch the world burn.  I don't buy it.  I think it is actually extremely rare for a person's character to be misanthropic at the core.  I believe there is a small frightened child inside every aggressor; one who lacks the language to understand his own emotions.  Inside my brother there is a deep human hunger for love and connection, and that's in most everyone.

In interviews we have many layers of perception to see through before we might actually be able to glimpse something real about an interviewee.  My life experience with my older brother has informed everything (as sibling relationships tend to do.)  It is how I know to wait for people to arrive.  I think this makes me an excellent interviewer.  It is not seeing through your interviewee that you are attempting to do.  It is seeing through your own preconceptions...it is seeing beyond the mythical beast so you might see the child.