What's Your Perspective?

I try to feed my brain high-quality food. That is, great educational content on branding, marketing, design, entrepreneurship, strategy and process methodologies. But my brain also craves junk food sometimes.

So in moments of weakness I find myself scrolling sites like Bored Panda, KickAssFacts, or Listverse.

Imgur, a meme site, is probably the junkiest of my junk food sites. The viral image feed is incredibly eclectic. The next image could be a silly cat video or it could be something really inspiring.

I was cruising Imgur when an odd image caught my eye. It was a map of the world. But not like any map I’d seen before. It was a map of the world, but from a whale’s perspective.

All the oceans were connected into one big shape. The map ended where the water ended. Because as a whale, why would you even care what’s beyond the coast? The map covered only what’s important - to a whale.

Looking at that map I was struck with how limited our personal perspectives are. They are informed by our individual experiences or perceived boundaries. We make the mistake of thinking everyone sees things the way we do.

In our professional lives, when we design or communicate to a particular target market we may need to radically alter our approach. Transform the way we see things. Draw the customer journey map from a different perspective.

Try to see things like a whale.