My toddler son dug around in the bathroom drawer and located a deodorant stick. Carefully he placed it on my husband’s side of the sink and started sorting through the drawer again. Finding his prize, he solemnly handed my deodorant to me with these wise words, “Mama, you have to wear your deodorant, and Dada and I use his deodorant because we are mens and you are a girl.”
The anecdote is one of the tidbits I captured, and since forgotten in the letters, I’ve been writing to my son, who is now 12. Recently I told him about these letters and how I planned to give them to him when he is an adult. I explained that I hoped the remembrances would give him a sense of what life was like and what he was like when he was young.
“But I also want stories of you and Dad,” he said immediately.
For the last 106 letters, my focus has been on him. The letters have evolved, but his dad and I have always been minor characters in the Gavin Show because my focus was on him. Early on, I captured a lot of super cute mispronounced words I couldn’t bring myself to correct (bell-py = belly). Then notable musings and humorous grammar, “may you please stop telling me ‘no’ all the time, Mama. It is not nice!” Now I do my best to record stories about things he is experiencing and doing.
And now, with his 9-word request, my attention has shifted. I’ll do my best to put pen to paper and capture some mom and dad greatest hits.
When we create a product, service, or event for our members, we design through the lens of what we think they should want. In the beginning, this lens is correct and necessary for us to create an experiment or prototype to get our idea out in front of members. But the moment our vision starts to interface with members, we need to ask for feedback to start looking through their lens and not our own.
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