The imposter
I just went through life assuming that the people who read all the books must be smarter than me, when in reality, often the reverse is true. Sometimes formal education is just following a predetermined path, and making it to the other end is predictable and assumed. Groomed storybook success.
Part one: everything is design
I didn't go to university, but I did study photography in college, so that must count for something, right? I gravitated towards photography that was emotionally charged; something that could communicate complex ideas within the confines of a single image. It led me to work in commercial photography, on editorial projects, and with lots of tourism clients. As consumer digital photography creeped in, though, there was less and less need for a professional who could shoot a perfect roll of slide film. I moved into graphic design—again, largely in the advertising, product marketing, and tourism space—spending more than a decade there.
Although I loved visual communication as a practice, my job eventually devolved into a rut of just selling people things they didn’t actually need. I was good at it, but it started to feel a little…gross. It wasn’t until I discovered User Experience Design as a practice that I realized I could use my skills for good, rather than evil. Design to improve; not just to sell.
As an Executive Directive of a non-profit, that’s what I love about my work today. It may not be “design”, but it’s still about human experiences. People. Users don’t move through a space, people do. And, people are weird and fabulous! What’s better for a problem-solver than a problem that changes its mind from minute to minute, has good days and bad days, tummy aches, and panic attacks? It’s a challenge I accept because the outcomes usually outweigh the risks when you can design smarter and outcomes are measured by user experience and not solely by budgets.
For the last few years, I've been consulting and designing healthcare related policy, doing health education, and leading a health systems navigation team. This is where I will remind you again: I studied analog photography. What am I doing here? Why am I at all these strange high-level meetings, having coffee dates with CEOs, speaking to national boards and federal policy decision makers? Surely, I am not qualified to be here, so why do they keep inviting me to these things? What could they possibly have to learn from me? Shouldn't they know all this stuff? What do I have, that they don’t?
