1/12/2022

The more I think about it, the more I understand debate AS design.

First, the balance of empathy and advocacy. One of the key skills debate demands is judge adaptation - no two judges are the same, to succeed a debater must be willing to craft arguments that meet judges where they are at. Don’t even get me started on winning arguments in front of panels of multiple judges. It matters not how fancy/compelling your argument is if you can’t convince the person in front of you that it’s, well, right. You must empathize/understand the perspective of the judge in designing your strategic approach to a round.

At least in debate we often get a judge philosophy (a written statement crafted by the judge to explain their view on certain strategies/arguments) to better understand how to empathize. However, the funny thing about that is that many times, the philosophy reflects what a judge thinks they think, and may be different from how they actually process things in a given round. Awesome UX researchers understand this is a limitation of interviews, but it’s easy to forget - people don’t always know how they think and what they find compelling.

Debaters care deeply about their arguments (their products) even though they sometimes seem obtuse/confusing/unconventional to the audiences reacting to them. To get debaters excited and motivated, you have to give them space to craft positions they feel invested in. Product managers, similarly, are much more likely to succeed when they learn to love the thing they’re evangelizing to various stakeholders. For me, I also understand how PM work must be incredibly rewarding at times and so frustrating at others. We want the debaters (the designers, the engineers, the AEs) to be able to express their vision, but we also want them to be successful in achieving the end goal.

A successful debate team is running what amounts to design sprints throughout the year (I think we’d be even more effective if we did this in a more overtly sprint structured way). You bring in the various stakeholders on a team, you research and mine each other’s perspectives, you build the argument, you build a wireframe of the argument and test it in practice, and then you build the final product and put it out in the world. As it encounters audiences, you go back to the drawing board and iterate new versions based on what you’ve learned. In this way, when we’re doing it right, the process of define—>design—>test and then iterate, iterate, improve is what enables success in debate space.

I love being a debate coach and I love design. I am understanding more all the time the relationship between these two and it’s been AWESOME.

#debate #design #productdesign #ux

1/5/2022

In debate, we have a set of arguments called "procedurals". These arguments say the other team ought lose because they've violated a rule or process (as opposed to not having defended their proposed idea sufficiently). For example, we could say the affirmative team may have a good idea but they did not really situate their idea in the context of the specific resolution we were asked to debate.

I made it to the quarterfinals of nationals my freshman year because I spent a ridiculous amount of time practicing that genre of argument. I won many debates against superior debaters because I was deeper on this specific argument than they were. I trained to execute this kind of argument as often as I could because it often gave me a slight edge against any opponent.

My sophomore year, my partner and I made it to the championship round and we lost in a close and heartbreaking decision. The hard thing I had to own was that I went for the wrong argument. You see, the other team knew what I would try to make the debate about and they did everything they could to close that path. I couldn't adapt to the situation - I went for what I thought was the easy path, but I was wrong, my blinders kept me from seeing that the easier path was actually executing the strategy I felt less comfortable with.

It's one of the ways I understand how my time in debate taught me how to be successful in a lot of situations. When we're trying to be successful, we can foreclose our paths to success because we search for what's comfortable. To be creative and dynamic, we must combine our strengths with our awareness of the particular solution in front of us.

After that experience, I spent the rest of my career learning the kinds of arguments that made me most uncomfortable. I found that hiding from discomfort limits you from achieving your goals. A couple national titles later, I can say, yes... this is the way.

11/25/2021

One thing I worry that L&D misses sometimes is that in the focus on the Science of Learning, we sometimes miss the Experience of Learning.

I've taught sections of 80 students and sections of 13 students. In these groups, different strategies are required to reach students and give them a useful experience. In both groups, I have been most successful in considering not just the content I teach, but the way they experience the classroom.

For good reason, there is a lot of focus on interaction in ID. But anyone who ever went to a large lecture and had the instructor split you into groups so you could brainstorm together will tell you... just HAVING interaction isn't enough.