Andy Mangold

Some thoughts on extremists vs. specialists, with a few little diagrams.

I will now make up a person for the purposes of illustrating what has been bouncing around my head for the past couple of days.

There is this guy I know named Jerry. Jerry is a very passionate person, especially about one subject in particular: lighting fixtures. Jerry’s job is to sell and install lighting fixtures, in his spare time he reads his favorite lamp blogs, and he surrounds himself with other lighting enthusiasts. By all quantifiable measures, it would seem that Jerry is an expert in lighting: the guy you would want to have around when making lighting decisions in your own home. However, for the sake of this story at least, Jerry is an extremist. Though he may know all there is to know about these fixtures themselves, he has no interest in your family, your home, or your specific lighting needs. When you ask him a question about lamps, his answer is so full of jargon and the snobbery that all to often comes with expertise that he is no help to you. Despite all of his knowledge, he is useless and irrelevant to you and your lighting woes.

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For the CDP project I am fortunate enough to be a part of this semester, we are tackling injury prevention in the home and must speak to a multi-lingual and otherwise diverse audience. I have been developing some IKEA style diagrams to address specific instances of injury that can occur in the home, and I thought I might post my modest progress thus-far.

I have adopted this gray, genderless, raceless, and more or less ageless character into all of my diagrams and affectionately dubbed him “Nubbins” (inspired by his doughy construction and a particular episode of This American Life).