Disclaimer: Purely informational, no advertisement nor monetization.

Not many people think about “tailoring” when they start to create something such as an entrepreneurial product, academic research project, or advance in workplaces. They may initially blame it on talents not being recognized, which is something not within our control, but the following write-up will concisely prove otherwise and allow us to “get our talents recognized.”

Cornell University taught me these knowledge for User Design - why certain things we do are not cognized and how we can understand the principles needed for us to gain cognition, influence, and publicity in the modern world.

Example today sourced from Ancient Library page on Facebook - about service and payment.

When I first saw this photo, I thought someone was getting stabbed or mugged.

After reading the passage about this violinist Joshua Bell, we now know the dude was performing a valuable performance for $30, but it was worth $100 per person two days ago.

User Design Thinking:

1. Deconstruct the message:
   1. Key here is that the highly sought out and paid violinist JB did not get paid for playing in a subway 2 days later - The following passage describes how this was an experiment that proved talent is not recognized, like many in the world. Yet. (you, reader, are one of them).

Don’t place the blame on others for not recognizing your worth, understand your audience/users.

1. Reconstruct with context:
   1. Persona Analysis: New York subway is an environment where person X’s top need is to get to the train station and get to the next destination in X’s mind. It can be expensive to stop by for a violinist, then miss a client meeting or family’s dinner because that can damage X’s life more than if X stopped for a second to appreciate the simple things.

It is melancholic - we don’t get much chance to take a break nowadays - but the social condition pushes us to behave this way. In New York subway, there are too many stranger’s doing random actions, usually to get attention or money out of you. Therefore, we have grew our brain to react to external signal in a subway by filtering it out so that we do not get distracted. We remain focused on our immediate goal so we don’t lose out on more important things life.

Do this to help others recognize you:

1. Understand the audience:
   1. Ask around in real life, in reddit, or in google search
   2. For example, wanting a promotion or a raise - ask your manager or seniors “what are their top evaluation metric for a salary/bonus raise?” OR “what actions can be the best to let them know so they can vouch for you during the end of year discussion?” Know about what the company needs and what the seniors care enough to recognize while they are busy with their own to-dos. Define the expectation through these questions every other months, promote the things you did that met the criteria that were looked at and tailor your to-dos each week to surprise the senior or the manager.
   3. Another example, performing a service - in the violinist’s backstory, we learned that with a proper stage, a professional ticketing service, and an environment to set the mood for the audiences who are willing to buy. The violinist sold his tickets for $100 each and sold out to hundreds or thousands of people. That $10k-$100k revenue is not a small number for a 1 hour long performance.
      1. Key 1: audiences already want his performance, enjoy his music/service.
      2. Key 2: audiences likely finished a busy day and wanted a weekend plan at a nice place, therefore, they would pay for the environment, the stage, and the presentation for the 1 hour long performance.
      3. Key 3: no one else can perform like this unique violinist Joshua Bell.
      4. You: figure out
         1. why you do what you do?
         2. who already enjoy your service?
         3. ask them: would someone with an abundant income would pay for this thing that you do?
         4. define “who” with money aside would pay for this and figure out how they can access you?
         5. evaluate your service fee based on similar services on the market. If you are charging $120 to draw someone a personal profile portrait, or $60 for each hour of DJing, better make sure that people who already do this service with years of experience is not charging less than you.
         6. access: this may be seeing your video, your service, or any other advertisements.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to the following:

1. Who cares about what you do, and why you do it, to the point that they would pay you to do it?