- [excerpt from http: //www.aiga.org/content.cfm/ever-notice]
- PORTIGAL: I’m excited to discuss “noticing” with you. Ironically, I think its importance in design and innovation is under-recognized.
- SOLTZBERG: It is ironic. People don’t notice that noticing is important! Or that they’re already doing it. It’s kind of like breathing—we’re not usually that aware of it. It’s much easier to recognize more “outbound” activities like brainstorming, testing, designing, refining. But noticing is just as important—it’s really where everything begins. There’s a funny Zen saying about that: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” It’s a reminder to let yourself take things in as well as output them.
- PORTIGAL: That reminds me of improv. Newcomers expect that improv is a very active, concerted effort to be funny. But what’s so stimulating about doing improv is that it’s not (necessarily) about being funny, but that the whole approach of saying, “Yes, and...,” guides us to notice and act in response to what the rest of the team is doing. It becomes this collaborative problem-solving activity that happens to generate a performance, rather than the typical “stuff from the inside comes out” model of performance. And the key to making that performance flow is that everyone is paying close attention each other.
- SOLTZBERG: It’s funny you say “notice and act.” To reference Zen again, one of the maxims of Zen practice is “notice and allow.” In both practices—improv and meditation—I think giving yourself permission to “just be,” to receive without transmitting, makes it possible to really drink in sensory data and to really listen to other people with an incredible kind of unforced compassion. It reminds me a lot of the approach we take to being with people when we do fieldwork. In the field, you have to simultaneously drink all kinds of information in, and at the same time be active in guiding the interaction. There’s this tightrope walk between action and non-action, ego and non-ego. To move back and forth gracefully between these different ways of being requires noticing not just what’s going on around you but what’s going on inside you as well. It’s one of these things that sounds so simple, but really takes practice to be good at.
You Talk to Me
Interviews and conversations that speak to us.
Steve Portigal talks to Dan Soltzberg about "super-noticing power"
