We Are More Alike Than We Are Different

Fuel Your Curiosity Newsletters
Written By michele ronsen

What travel keeps teaching me about the people we research

People are more alike than they are different.

I know that is not a hip thing to say in a field that sells cultural nuance for a living, but I've watched it be true across continents more times than I can count.

I spent the last few weeks off. Really off. With my daughter. In places where we did not speak the language, could not read the signs, and tried hard not to check email. What I noticed, again and again, is how much the "surface" changes and how little the "underneath" does.

Different food, same table. Different transit, same rush. Different words for "please" and "thank you," yet the same eye contact when someone means it.

Parents everywhere are tired in the same way. Tweens and teenagers everywhere are bored in the same way. Shopkeepers everywhere size you up in the same three seconds. The wanderlust I feel walking into a new square at dusk is the wanderlust a stranger feels walking into the San Francisco Ferry Building. The visual changes. The emotional does not.

Culture is real. It shapes how people express what they want. It rarely changes what they want.

 
 

This is the part of research most researchers, including myself, underplay. We are so trained to look for differences that we forget that the finding underneath most findings is a version of the same sentence. I want to be understood. I want to make something that matters. I want the people I love to be okay.

It's not a reason to skip the research. It is the reason to do it well. Because if the underlying wants rhyme, the design work is figuring out how the wants show up in this context, for this audience, in this moment. That is a much sharper job than "uncover cultural insights." That is craft.

A few other things I noticed on this trip.

I enjoyed not worrying (too much!) about work. It goes against my grain, but it is increasingly possible for me to really "get away."

I read four books. Someone smaller than me read two, one of them willingly for the very first time. The stamps in her passport are not the ones that mattered.

My daughter is growing up whether I'm watching or not. I chose to watch.

Last night, on the last night of the trip, we had dinner with an ALAP grad I had never met in person. She came to me wanting to transition into research. She worked her arse off, transitioned in three months, and we are finally in the same city on the same night. That is its own version of what I am trying to say.The wants rhyme. The paths do not.

Back at my desk on Monday after the July 4th weekend. Coffee. Notebook. The good pen.

 
 

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We try to alternate between a theme and Insights/UX/UXR jobs, events, classes, articles, and other happenings every so often. Thank you for all of the feedback. Feedback is a gift, and we continue to receive very actionable input on how to make Fuel Your Curiosity more meaningful to you.

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Stay curious,

- Michele and the Curiosity Tank team


michele ronsen
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