Together, we* create...
Access Behavior
Why Access Operates Like A Whirlpool
In the 7th grade, my parents sat me down around our big oak coffee table. This is the place we had all family discussions. It was a neutral zone. A place for dinner. Reading. Conversation. On this particular day, however, why we met at the big oak table circled around a less fun, super lame, possibly soul crushing and definitely embarrassing af topics.
On this frightful day—Neil would learn that he had a diagnosable Learning Disability. The terribly ironic thing about this Learning Disability (LD) is that he can't ,for the life of him, remember what the blasted disability is called. Much like how the word dyslexia is an absolutely bonkers word choice for people who are, indeed, dyslexic—this lack of remembering is the disability, itself. Where most can study and retain facts too later regurgitate, I find myself lost in a tornado of thought.
Outcast and often feeling lesser then because I learned subjects and took tests slower than 99% of my peers, I felt pretty low, and full of shame for much of my middle and high school years. I think, now, looking back on all of this access to Learning Disability classes and with later years of therapy, I've been able to unpack, understand, and rewire internal blocks and senses of shame surrounding this form of learning. For years, I felt trapped in my own swirling, whirling understanding of the world, constantly running behind to collect and retain whatever matter those who had already finished the race, held.
I felt trapped in time— a curious feeling for a young mind to learn how to grapple with.
In my late teens, after 7 years of access to LD classes, I learned that I could, indeed, master my own pursuit of Time. From that point on, I would work tirelessly to remain "normal," wearing as many masks as I could get my hands on while feeling incredibly thankful for access to Time as a greater tool in my tool belt. By my mid-to-late 20's I had begun to see glimpses that my Learning Disability was a gift and no longer a burden. When accessed with intent and care— Time could help others find shared value through access of communication, tooling, relatability, inclusivity.
Given the gift of time, early on, my relationship with this force grew into a space of trust as it intertwined with my changing DNA. Time quickly became a steady friend that I could confide in. Learn honest and positive forms of expression from. And grow imagination & strategy within. Time offers greater honed access to explore feelings like empathy. Specifically in Learning Disability classes, I often entertained how someone in a wheelchair experiences time versus someone who can't sit still? How does time within space impact our ability to find and create named, patternized Access? When combining physical and mental disabilities into one space — how can Time formulate understandings of where deeper abilities, workarounds, or alternative methodologies of learning, thinking, and doing can stem from?
Unbeknown to me, at the time, Access would ultimately become a major focus of my career. How we treat those who cannot perform the same tasks in the same amount of time (or manner) as others, is where industry, societal, and economic change stems from, and possibly, a great place to focus Access Behavior, today.
As Time morphed into a tool, I found that the formal pursuit of Time, itself, was best expressed through Artistry. Here, Creative expression is a place where not having the right answers is encouraged; spending more time on an assignment was a pre-requisite in Art College—especially for budding minds. It was empowering af to witness all the little weirdo LD kids assemble, excel, and build each other up through diverse forms of time, space, access, and self expression.
Expression is a form of Creativity that digs down deep. How we express ourselves as people is relative to our experience of trust and value within expression, itself. For most, expression can feel scary, triggering, like a daunting task or something to truly feel scared of. These feelings were felt, often, when attending Art College and throughout much of my early career. Loathing the process of self expression is not delegated, only, to those who do not practice. Expression is a tool and a medium that shares learned properties & forms of practice similar to how a muscle must be trained over time.
How we express ourselves as leaders, is imperative to the growth of the industries we build for. Without proper Communication Design— issues like the downfall of NFT's are an example of how an industry created by Engineers cannot sustain what society seeks as a form of lasting Self Expression. Until Self Expression is achieved within markets like Crypto and Bitcoin— mass adoption will continue to fall short. Users don't need to understand how Crypto or Bitcoin works— it simply needs to fit into the frameworks of their lives.
The best interactions, in my opinion, stem from fluid systems—where just enough of a Clients Self Expression is mixed with the Creator's Direction, crystalizing to find center through a dance that yields profitability, long-lasting and sustainable user relationships, and deep and trusted forms of value within all Brand & Product interactions.
The brackish waters of Brand & Product development are often fraught with uncertainty. Streams of Creativity, cashflow, ideation, and trust behave much more like rapids, than lazy rivers. Like watching a whirlpool swirl in a stream, the leaves that are pulled into this whirling flow require Time and Expression to build sustainable forms of Brand & Product Access. In essence, how the and why the leaves are sucked into said whirlpool is where study is needed most. What makes up the body of this whirlpool and how can we can best study and implement more inclusive, universal, and standard forms of Access is what will define the strength and longevity of the whirlpools walls.
Working within Brand Systems, Neil increasingly seeks 'universality' as a broader term, field, and living definition into how and why Brands & Products are accepted, utilized, and further studied within and across numerous forms of Interaction, Language, Pictograph, Haptic, & Color (Access) Standardization techniques. Across both physical and digital spaces our Access Behavior is no longer a place of Brand Marketing Personas. Today, our audiences seek a new era of learning, access, time, and expression. We must join forces with the heavy and detailed forms of research collected in Academia where nuances like Learning Disabilities are combined with the mass user-driven data, cultural, and trend definitions seen in private and public sectors. We must work backwards from bias to better understand the complexities of every individual, while continuing to build trust-based boundaries held up by the ethical pursuits of privacy to adequately define the value we collectively seek as we move through time and space over the next 10 years of development.