Contrarian Design

I do a lot of things differently than most people. Compared to most in my high school, I was different to leave the state for college. In college, I was different to have priorities above just grades. Unlike most who commute, I am different to ride the train, skateboard, and bike. At work, I am different to work a paying job only part-time. Among those who learn, I am different to only do so independently.

Two things about this are fascinating to me. One, I am not different by being different. An interesting thread of thought has been snaking through my experience lately–the idea that categorization is evil and of each person being entirely unique. By categorizing people, we seek to put them in existing boxes that we already know how to treat. But to love them, we must embrace their differences, for it is only with our differences that we can be complementary to each other and truly work together. So I am not different by being different. Everyone feels this way about themselves at times; that they are alone and the world lacks another like themselves.

The second thing I find interesting about my differences is that they all seem to contribute to design in some way. Friends often ask me why I don’t just

get a car/get a full-time job/worry about grades/go back to school/go with the flow

…like everyone else. My answer currently is twofold–first, I have done everything they suggest and this is more enjoyable to me; and second, to do so again just feels like it would be a cop-out. I feel a very strong need to view things from an outsider perspective, so that I might design changes for the better. Each of the concessions above would be extremely easy to slip back into, but I know that once I do so, the effort-added value that we psychologically attribute to things we are part of would increase until I no longer felt the need to change them. It is settling, plain and simple, and at 24, healthy, and capable, I feel no desire to settle.

Applied to design, this philosophy has a few proponents. Bruce Mau says:

To invent anything, you have to be removed from the world. In order to have the capacity, the liberty, to imagine something better, you need to step outside of it for a while.

Bob Sutton explores similar ideas in Weird Ideas That Work: Hire Slow Learners (of the organizational code); Hire People Who Make You Uncomfortable, Even Those You Dislike. These ideas point to the best employees being those who are different, who bring something new to the table, who will give you things you could never have come up with by working with those exactly like you.

Dean Kamen also emphasizes this as a corporate philosophy. His “frog-kissing” days at DEKA force employees to do different things than they are used to and celebrates the uniqueness of each employee:

If I gave you objectives, you might reach them, and that would be terrible, because it might keep you from doing something really great.

Now, many of my genius friends have it easier–they can create innovative and totally unique things, and also pacify their instructors and bosses with top-notch assignments. However, not being a genius myself, I have had to make choices between these two goals. For now, I am able to support my desire for uniqueness by working in a creative capacity at a part-time job. As long as I can be responsible for my finances, and support a happy life for myself and my loved ones, I will do so by working traditionally as little as possible. I will continue to do so until I find something that is both personally unique and traditionally accepted.