PERSONALITY & ATTITUDES AND ATTITUDINAL SHIFTS

Abstract

The objective of this essay is to bring into light the personalities of a designer, his attitude and the changes in his attitude. It is the attitude of the designer which lets him think out of the box and come up with innovative ideas to solve a problem. This attitude only defines his personality and makes him stand out in the corporate world. There is nothing like a good design or bad design, if something is created which is bad or does not serve any purpose it is not a design. Design is always good and the attitude of a designer can only make it come true. The difference in the level of goodness of a design is also because of the attitude of the designer which might be positive or negative, as it changes according to the situations. It is human behaviour to adapt to the surroundings and those people who are not able to adapt can bring a change/ might not survive for long. All depends on what a person perceives from the experiences, it might be positive or negative which decides his reaction. This writing also talks about how design can bring change in attitudes of the users, how it helps people to consciously or subconsciously alter their behaviour to suit the welfare of a society.

Keywords: stand out , goodness of design, perceives, positive - negative attitude, behaviour, design changes behaviour.

Introduction

Personality is set of traits, characteristics, and predispositions of a person, it usually matures and stabilizes with age and affects how a person adjusts to different environments. People develop their thinking patterns as their life unfolds, they learn from their surroundings and personality is also inherited genetically. While attitudes are the learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favourable or unfavourable manner with respect to a given situation or object.

Design is not a profession but an attitude because when it comes to creating something new and original there is no guarantee of success but designers have the courage to take the risk unlike the corporate people, they face the challenges and come up with new and breakthrough ideas. Designers have to be empathetic which requires courage, honesty and abandoning one's mental models. They create new meaning out of complexities, make thing simpler for users and to do all this they need to have an attitude which defines their personality.

Attitudes do change according to the changing environment and situations. People develop and change attitude because of their belief about a particular object/ environment/ situation and how they evaluate it. Attitude change depends on the social experiences, family upbringings, peer groups and work groups of a person. In design the change in attitude comes when a person experiences success or failures while working, the change can be positive or negative depending upon what the designer perceives from the surroundings.

My experience

I would like to share my personal experiences in design, the ups and downs I faced while learning design, and what behavioural changes I experienced in myself and my colleagues. I am an Architect, and I have always loved creating something new and different. When I started learning I was quite rigid with my thoughts and I use to think that what I am doing is the best because of which I was always short of ideas which were not enough to cater the needs. I use to get redoes but I had no clue where I am wrong, most of the teachers did not pointed out the mistakes or short comings. Similar situations were faced by more than half of my batch mates in the college. Initially all of us were at the same level getting redoes again and again until the outcome was satisfying. As a result some students lost faith in themselves and in their work, some tried a lot to cope up and some tried even harder to achieve the threshold, they tried every possible ways to understand their short comings by talking to teachers even after getting scolding, by taking help from seniors, reading books and blogs, etc. So, the success and failures were a result of the attitude of the students, the ones who took a positive approach towards understanding the short comings and overcoming it succeeded and the ones who took offence in getting redoes never tried to figure out the problem in their work could never cope up with the learning.

The problem faced in the above case was the same but students responded to it differently. Some took a positively some took is negatively and thus got different results. Thinking positively needs courage, needs a wise evaluation towards a situation or object, this is the attitude of a designer.

My perspective

In the initial stages of design there is a lot of ambiguity, the designer has no clue how the project is going to unfold, but he has the courage to work on it. There is a lot of experimentation and trial n error but designers are brave enough to face the failures, learn from it and try a new solution, they value experimentation. Designers conduct proper ethnography before coming up with a solution, they are empathetic, they don't consider themselves the most knowledgeable until and unless they have done an proper user research. They never pretend that they have all the answers, even after doing research and coming up with a solution they do usability testing in order to check whether the idea is satisfying or not. Designers have a playful approach towards their creation. They believe that being playful helps in creating more ideas and they can even tackle sensitive issues or problems in a easier way. This is the attitude of a designer.

A creation which is falling short of usefulness or goodness exhibits laziness, deceit, pettiness and fear which are not in the habit of a true designer. This happens when the creator becomes rigid about his ideas and the reason can be many like losing interest in work, repetitive failures, lack of time, etc. This is how the attitude gets affected and hence changes according to the changing circumstances. Sometimes even the people with negative attitude turn positive if circumstances are favourable and the reason to this can also be many, getting inspired by others work, realization of the lack in their work, getting proper guidance, etc which can turn his negative thoughts into positive.

Talking about how design can change attitudes I would like to discuss some simple and effective design solutions which are as follows:

The technology used to change attitude or behaviours of user through persuasion and social influence is called persuasive technology. It is used to communicate a message and these communications become more effective if they make the recipients (users) feel good about themselves like in the above examples users feel good when they consume less water to wash hands, the subway user also enjoy taking the steps because it is fun walking on different patterns which also gives them an exercise so they are happy. Even some fearful advertisements helps in attitude change.

For example- The fearful ads which focus on self-concern, and advertisements that are framed in a way that suggests that a behaviour will harm the self are more effective than the same messages that are framed more positively. A few anti-smoking advertisements which astonishes/ scares the viewer, effectively helps in changing the behaviour as people will definitely think before smoking after watching the advertisement or warnings.

Sometimes the messages to be conveyed must teach a lesson to the user in order to change the attitude or to reinforce the change in attitude for common welfare. For example the anti- pee wall in Germany (Walls that 'pee back' tackle people who urinate in public). A railway station in Cologne, Germany has implemented this idea first using hydrophobic paint in order to teach people a lesson that public property should not be misused or spoilt.

Likewise, imagine a simple message or graphic on the polythene bags that are sold in their millions across the world every day. A subtle message that reminds the user how they are contributing to an environmental disaster will make the individual aware of their actions and consequences. The primary step that triggers attitude change is the process of creating awareness. The task of making a billion people to be aware of all the social evils that plagues their society is not a joke- All the more reason for design to play a proactive role in awareness and sensitization campaigns.

Conclusion

Design is a very powerful weapon that can be used for the welfare of the society, it can highlight the pros and cons of the prejudiced mindsets and affects all sections of the society. So, a designer has to take his decisions wisely in order to serve a larger mass and bring about the change.

References:

Universal Principles of Design, by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
Change by Design How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown.
Compliance, Identification, and Internalization: Three Processes of Attitude Change by Herbert C. Kelman.
Behavioural and attitude change through design ( Designwala.com)
Attitude Change through Visual Imagery in Advertising (by John R. Rossiter & Larry Percy)

A Designer's Perspective