Perched

As we see the world around us we mostly see what we want to see. This subjective perspective can be quite limiting if we have to truly taste what the world has to offer.

But do we even understand this limitation? As UX practitioners we like to say we can step into the user’s shoes at will. To really step into somebody else’s shoes we should practice frequent perspective shifts. 

Way back as a student, I had to grab a ride very late in the night past all public transport time. Travelling on a truck with a bunch of labourers very late at night, I saw the city hoardings, all in English as meaningless gibberish as seen by my illiterate fellow passengers. It was an early perspective shift that has always stayed with me. 

To practice perspective shift we should understand where we’ve perched ourselves. We define our identity by our various preferences and privileges. The village or megapolis we live in, the car we drive and the company we keep stays mostly in the same vector as we socially climb. Once in a while life deals us a break- we’re plucked out of our nest and dropped in the middle of  an unfamiliar setting and we begin to see things differently. Travel does that too but only if we actively seek to displace. 

Migrants moving to first world economies stay perched at these high branches gripping tightly, adopting local perspectives and find the obligatory visits to homeland strange and avoidable mainly because of perspective atrophy. 

Certain perspectives can be dangerous- local politics is now global politics and vice versa- refusing to take a stance can be quite liberating. Same can be said about science, arts and literature. 

Continuous slight shifts practiced daily will eventually lead to no perspective. And with no fixed perspective shifting becomes second nature. And at some point objectivity becomes visible.