Introversion
Posted on December 17, 2013 | posted by:My name is Gertrud, and I am an introvert. There, I admitted it. Phew.
I was a quiet child, preferred reading and drawing over playing with the other kids. I would watch the other children outside playing, and actually be content. But I experienced an inner dissonance of a cognitive sort. I was supposed to engage and play with the other children. My outgoing and chatty mother worried, trying to encourage me to initiate contact. My father didn’t, I was just very much his daughter he would say. Years passed and I grew up in a loud and extrovert world making outgoing and chatty friends, seeking opposites just as my father did. I learned to collaborate and speak up from a school system based around group work and group projects, forcing me to actively and verbally participate which I now, looking back, appreciate.
We talk a lot about cultural differences in this program, but little about personality traits and how that affects collaboration. What happens when the entire group consists of extroverts? Or when two are very headstrong? And how do I, as a now admitted introvert, place myself in a (trans)design discipline in which collaboration is so crucial? Being introvert is a challenge in an extrovert world. Not just for establishing social confidence, but your creative confidence as well.
The design world is fast paced and extrovert. Even as an independently working designer you still have to interact with clients, suppliers or buyers. The physical spaces have been trending towards the ‘open office’ environment, in which there are no doors and rarely full walls. It was thought to amplify innovation, but I have honestly come appreciate solitude and isolation as a catalyst as well.
John Thackara makes a good point on this increase in pace in his book “In the Bubble”. We innovate products to accommodate the constant acceleration in how we communicate and consume. Speed is worshipped unconditionally, but “speed is a cultural paradigm who’s time is up. Economic growth, and a constant acceleration in production, have run up against the limited carrying capacity of the planet”. As we are now coming to understand that because we must look into the term effects of our designs and interventions, we also need to slow down. To think things through and not hurry. We have valued risk takers for a very long time, but this changed perception gives me confidence to place myself creatively.
It has taken me a while, but reflecting upon the ending semester, I have come to realize that the true strength of my introversive nature is the things that don’t require me to speak at first. Observing and listening. I am of a reflective nature, I would rather perceive and analyze before interacting. It wasn’t until I came to this program that I, setting it in relation to collaboration, truly saw it as a quality rather than an inhibitor. My practice is not inquisitive but reflective.
Jamer Hunt writes in the Journal of Design Strategies: “Being reflective … affords practitioners a way to make their methods explicit, and in turn to build up awareness and a language for expressing their strategic value.”
And thank God for that.