“To me exploration is pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone”
- Mom
“Exploring to me is seeing things in different ways” - Patrick
“I think exploring is self driven and usually alone” - Nico
“Exploring is hard. You are constantly wrestling with yourself.” - Ramin
We all know exploration is a good thing, but somehow it eludes us in the hustle and bustle of our every day lives. What is it? And how can we bring more of it back into our lives?
Exploration
We attempt to answer these questions through design.
Through a series of interviews with 6 people, I tried to understand… What is exploration? How do people explore in their own lives?
And as you can see above, the answers were diverse. Exploration meant different things to different people. And what people did and how they felt they engaged with exploration was also surprising, insightful, and so different from how I myself engaged with it.
While these definitions were all very different, there was a common thread. They were all grappling with an unknown. And it was challenging. To some that challenge was fun. To others it frightened them.
To find out what keeps people from exploring a mentor suggested starting with one person. Figuring out what keeps that person from exploring. And figure out ways to help them overcome those boundaries.
Interviewing My Mother
Through the interview process I learned that my mom really enjoyed trying new things. “To me exploration is pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone.” She loves to try out new foods, to do artwork, and plays tennis avidly.
But when it came to organized sports, it seem like that explorative and playful spirit became challenged. She expressed stress, plenty of self criticism, and a desire to win. She realized that this wasn’t who she wanted to be, but didn’t know how to channel that playful spirit.
Define the problem
Seeing how this obsession with winning, her high expectations for herself have kept her from exploring… I asked:
How Might We?…
help her see that her focus on winning, the result, keeps her from exploring?
help her let go of these expectations and this hyper focus on winning?
help her get lost in the process instead of always thinking about the result?
Triggers that link to more productive mental pattern (Removing result oriented triggers)
Techniques that strengthen her presence in the moment
Awareness of her thoughts and emotions (ie Mood journal)
Change the metrics of success, that work or don’t work
Idea Themes
Prototype 1
The first prototype was a trigger. The “om” symbol on the right represents god and holds special significance to my mom. A grounding memento.
The wooden piece was laser cut and she creatively attached it to her shoes.
The second prototype was an exercise meant to improve the awareness my mom had of her emotions. A journal that she would keep after each match that she had to write down how she felt.
Problems. She would get so lost in the match that she would eventually forget about the trigger. The journaling exercise didn’t work because she forgot to do it!
Coming away from this prototype my hypothesis was that in this environment, was not conducive to exploration. Everyone there was there to win. Not to explore. Or at least, this space was for winning. There was no space for playful exploration. To try new things. She needed a space to try new things and to explore.
There was also the problem of forgetting to do what it was that they thought that they could be doing.
One Week Later…
Feedback
To continue exploring exploration. I moved onto another person to design for. My cousin Ramin.
Ramin
A cousin of mine Ramin, was the next person that I interviewed. Through the interview I learned of his love of rigorous, intellectual challenges such as probability and data analytics, exploring the world, openness to food and new experiences, as well as a profound and child-like curiosity. Ramin seemed to be the quintessential explorer.
But, in certain situations, Ramin would become the opposite of an explorer. His old strategy of analyze, persist, then you will find a solution, might have worked in probability, but it no longer serves him. At his newly founded company (which vended products through amazon) it keeps him in analysis paralysis. He wasn’t trying product out to get feedback, he was stuck in trying to see what would be the best product he could sell.
Define the problem
Seeing how Ramin is stuck in analysis paralysis, I asked…
How Might We?... help Ramin move past his analytical mind to be in the place of action that is essential to his ability to explore things every day?
Random sense stimuli to get him out of his head (Light, sound, smell)
Specific times throughout the day where he explores different ways he could make a decision
Note how many times he overthinks
Light Sensor (Make this)
Senses the amount of sound in the room (Make This)
Too quiet and something happens
Make notes to self
Reasons he should not overthink
Read about and learn from the top executives and how they make decisions
Screen saver or pop ups with people, quotes that remind him not to over-analyze
Have his wife Lucy, keep him accountable
Highlight the riskiests tasks, jump in and do it
Time bound tasks
Ideation
Idea themes:
Things to get him outside of his head (ie Smells, sounds, and his wife)
Accountability people
Time bound forcing decisions
Techniques or Cues (Help him apply mental habits that get him out of analysis)
Didn’t like the hat, anything that was distracting. Didn’t like anything that had too much stimulation. Didn’t like anything that he had to remember.
Reminder of whatever the goal is. Fairly subtle.
He loved reminders that emphasized the reasoning and the importance of having a bias towards making decisions. Things that help him stop and ask. “Do I have time to analyze or not?”
Things that engaged him more were things written down or things even more engaging like talking to a person
Feedback
Prototype
Something that would remind him to stop analyzing.
The alarm would look like the image most of the time. It would go off at different times of the day. When it did. It would be accompanied by a quote of his that reminded him of the reasons why he should not analyze.
Sujay
Sujay is a friend of mind. As a pre-med student, Sujay was working hard to become a doctor. With his singular focus, he said that while exploration was valuable, it was not important to him. Adding that when he was retired as a doctor, he would then spend his time exploring the world.
Sujay, naturally, also had very high expectations for himself. He didn’t enjoy being bad at something and would be stressed out and would quit if he looked bad while doing it. His high expectations of himself, fear of failure, and the value he placed in what others thought of him kept him from exploring anything.
Seeing how the challenges were lowering the barrier to explore, the fear of failure, and fearing what others would think of him. I asked…
How might we?… get Sujay to explore in a way that he perceives as fun and stakeless?
Define The Problem
Ideation
Robot Arm Challenege, pick up a cookie
Something that would choose one of three options for him
Stay home
Go out
Try something new
I Dare You Robot
Robot that plays a game with Sujay. If it wins you have to do a dare it gives you
Computer that scours the internet for things that sujay would like and enjoy doing
A drone that flies to different places and you have to follow it
Biological Analyzer
Analyzes your biology and chooses activities it knows you will have a strong likelihood of being good at
Teacher in the Sky
Takes you out of the environment and into the sky
Robot Master that can teach you anything that you want to learn
The Robot Chef
Teaching you how to cook
VR New Experiences
Random Walk Robot on a Map
Sujay didn’t like anything that could be potentially a nuisance, like the drone that he would have to follow (even to hard to reach places). He didn’t like ideas like the lights that he could use something he already has, like an 8 ball, to do.
He loved the ideas of a teacher that could teach him how to do anything. Open to learning.
He also loved the dare machine because he felt like I knew what he would and wouldn’t do. And I could come up with things that he would enjoy exploring. He wouldn’t do anything that took too much time.
For Sujay to explore: It must be concrete, something he believes he will be successful at, not super difficult
Feedback on Ideas
Even if a robotic artificial intelligence teacher that taught you anything you wanted is like super easy to do, I decided to go for the dare bot. Only thing I needed to do was come up with the dares that, based on the feedback must be concrete, something he believes he will be successful at, and not super difficult.
In coming up with these dares I asked myself:
What does Sujay perceive as high stakes?
What are the things that Sujay finds stakeless?
What are the things that Sujay finds fun?
What are things that he does?
What are things that he wants to explore?
This way I could avoid the high stakes things and use the things that he already does or wants to do, to be less friction dares. The prompts that I came up with were.
Doing things in a new way
Doing something new or atypical
Learning something new
Doing something familiar, yet unfamiliar
Giving him influence to explore
Doing something silly
With around 5-10 in each category I turned my sights to making the dare machine
Final Prototype
The final prototype would be a dare machine that would be drawing on Sujay’s love for Avatar the Last Airbender. The machine would write prompts where the characters would dare him. “Avatar Aang dares you to roll around on the floor.”
The computer would draw upon a list of 30 dares, randomly drawing on one dare every time Sujay would turn on the machine.
I like the dares
I wish that it was easier, it is annoying trying to get to the next dare
I wish it said completed
I am not going to wait 50 seconds to do something
You responding that you changed it without completing the challenges
Archetypes
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Worry Wart
They are a trier, they tend to try new things and expose themselves to new things. The activities that they pursue tend to be well within their capabilities for they fear failure. Because they never push themselves far out of their comfort zone, none of the things that they try bring them much enjoyment.
They are extrinsically motivated, meaning their minds go straight to the result that they perceive an action will take and are very concerned with how this end result will turn out.
Because they almost out of habit, think directly about the result, they immediately start worrying about the outcome or the difficulties (which they tend to believe are far out of their ability) that they will have to surmount to achieve the goals.
They tend to be defeated by failure, unconsciously not accepting that exploring is difficult.
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the Explorer
The explorer is like a torpedo. Once they lock onto something that they are interested in, they go all out in that direction.
They tend to have a bias towards action. Seeing something that they want, and immediately going after it.
The Explorer is intrinsically motivated, finding enjoyment in the action in of itself as opposed to the end result. They get ‘lost’ in this action.
While they may try new things, they far more enjoy challenging themselves, especially when that challenge involved them to find their own way toward what they desire. They enjoy the struggle of challenges and almost unconsciously seek to challenge themselves all the time. They also tend to accept exploring as a difficult endeavor and accept failure as a part of the process.
Challenge Habits
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Challenge Habit: Worry Wart
A negative challenge habit is one that is pretty miserable! These people have a deep desire for achieving something outside themselves. Whether that’s conventional views of success, for people to have a good perception of them, money. They do it to achieve a result. These people are unrealistic. They want a result, whether they consciously know that or not, and they inevitably criticize themselves, get depressed and don’t change. They continue this vicious cycle until they give up or persist unhappily. They develop low self esteem. They tend to take failure personally, not paying attention to their own personal circumstances.
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Challenge Habit: the Explorer
People who have a productive challenge habits tend to have stronger grounding in reality. They have accepted that things won't go their way all the time. They will not always meet their goals and expectations. They enjoy struggling, the process, exploration, growth, and they value these things over external measures of success such as money, performance, or how liked they are. They are constantly trying to get to that point where they are being pushed to their razor’s edge. They adjust themselves and their expectations in ways that are in line with reality and continue to go after the things that they enjoy. They don’t interpret failures personally and usually explain it through circumstance.
What I learned
What did I learn… it’s all about how do we as people want to change.