Recently, I posted an article on LinkedIn, What an Assassin Taught Me About Experience.
In the comments, Nicola added that she notices wheelchair access wherever she goes, not because of her work, but because her sister uses a wheelchair.
Like Jason Bourne, her experience had trained her attention.
I replied that this was a great example of experience changing what we notice.
As I thought about this, I noticed my own relationship with wheelchair ramps.
I’m an ex-architect and I saw ramps as a nuisance. They were one more thing we had to add to our designs, they took up valuable space, they complicated circulation and sometimes they ‘messed up’ what I wanted the building to look like.
Nicola and I both noticed wheelchair ramps. But we didn’t see the same thing.
Nicola saw her sister; I saw lines on paper.
She saw what the ramp gave someone, I saw what the ramp cost the design.
She saw access, mobility, independence and participation. I saw space, complexity, regulation and compromise.
Nothing about the physical ramp had changed, but the meaning of the ramp changed according to the experience of the person looking at it.
Jason Bourne’s experience changed what he noticed.
The wheelchair ramp also shows that experience changes what something means when we notice it.
I knew what ramps were for. I knew that people needed them.
But my architectural experience had trained me to translate buildings into drawings, dimensions, circulation, regulations, aesthetics and problems that required resolution.
But in all of that, I lost sight of the person the lines were there to serve.
Expertise doesn’t just change what we notice. It changes the significance we give to what we notice.
Nicola’s experience with her sister taught her to see ramps differently.
And encountering someone else’s perception can expose the limits of our own.
A simple LinkedIn comment revealed something in my own way of thinking that I hadn’t noticed before. Thanks Nicola.
What do you see every day that someone else’s experience might teach you to see differently?
More Field Notes
This is Field Note #19. Field Notes are observations from my ongoing enquiry into experience. To learn more about how to make the most of your experience, read these posts next:
