Self-Reflection Space #1: Perception vs Reality

An introduction of sorts

Hello and welcome. This is the first in a series of self-reflection pieces on the philosophies of design and research. I don't claim to be a formal philosopher nor do I claim to have the answers. Nevertheless, merely the act of questioning and reflecting is an answer in and of itself.

Articles in this series will be written in a mostly stream-of-consciousness style. I hope you enjoy some of my thoughts and, who knows, maybe even inspired to think a bit about the questions yourself.

"Is it better for a design to meet a person's perceptions or the objective reality?"

In the era of "fake news" and "alternative facts," I found myself coming back to this question. The answer, it seems, have changed and changed again.

To be frank, I've had conversations with myself about this topic for as long as I can remember. When I was in high school and saw the world much more in black and white, I would have answered, with great certainty, the objective reality. 

And why not? The whims and emotions are just that, whims and emotions, fleeting and ever changing. Not foundations you can build on. On top of that, if a person's own perceptions are considerably different from reality, great harms can come from this. You see examples of this in public policy all the time. One clear example being the relationship between punishment and crime. It might be natural to believe that harsher punishment decreases crime. After all, why would you want to commit crime if the penalties of getting caught are so great. It turns out though, that harsher penalties does not necessarily deter crime. Those policies to increase punishment may not be doing anything, even if it makes us feel safer.

For high school me, design–well, I probably wouldn't have called it design at that point, but I digress–should meet the actual realities and only those needs. How could anyone justify making a design decision based on a feeling? Wouldn't you be harming people? Any arguments for that would have been out of my understanding.  

Of course, growing up gives you new ways to look at problems and my viewpoint on this question changed over the years. As I got older, I saw that people for who they are, complex beings with views of the world different from mine. 

It was in this phase of my life where I felt a person's perspectives are indeed valuable, even if they do not reflect a capital-T-Truth. If a person feels aggrieved, their emotions are valid. If a person feels overjoyed, their emotions are valid. If a person feels incensed, their emotions are valid. That person is not me. They do not share my upbringing. They do not share my worldview. Who am I to say otherwise?

There was a point when I believed there was no objective reality. Well, not exactly. More that the objective reality didn't matter. As the phrase goes, perception is reality. 

Taking in an objective reality of the design was simply too naive. For the designer and researcher, the imperative was to take into account those emotions, feelings, thoughts, and attitudes. Capturing those personal "truths" became a necessary part of what I considered correct designs.

And then my perspectives changed again when I heard the terms "fake news" and "alternative facts" in 2016.

I saw people taking actions against what was commonly accepted as true to satisfy their own world view. I saw people disregard shared understanding in favor of satisfying their own opinions and agendas. All of a sudden, I saw the world being torn apart by extreme and weaponized appeal to perception. This felt quite uncomfortable to me, which led me to revisit my original self-reflection question.

After the last two years of reflection, I think I fall somewhere in the middle. The world best served by designs that take into account both personal perceptions and the objective reality. 

You might call that a cop-out, taking the middle road between two extremes. And maybe you'd be correct. However, in this case, I truly believe that the world can probably use a little bit of thinking from the middle. In all cases, we must ensure that our designs will actually improve real measures. At the same time, we must also ensure that people's perceptive needs are met. Only when we can find a balance will we truly create good design.

Thanks for Reading

I'm still searching for the right way to answer this question, and, who knows, I may never find a completely satisfactory one. I'll make sure to revisit this from time to time and reassess my own stance. For now, thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope you got something out of it.