Same but Different: What positionality can teach us about Universal Design

 

In August 2025, I attended a workshop in Melbourne called Decolonising Research Methods, led by Dr Bhiamie Williamson from National Indigenous Disaster Resilience (NIDR) at Monash University. National Indigenous Disaster Resilience - Monash Arts

The workshop was mostly attended by academics, but I wasn’t there as a researcher; I was interested in how some of the ideas Bhiamie was exploring might apply to my work in disaster preparedness and community resilience. 

One activity in particular has stayed with me. Bhiamie introduced us to the idea of “same but different”. He explained this as a deeply Indigenous understanding, and as a way of exploring positionality. At first it might sound obvious - of course people are both similar and different. But the exercise that followed revealed how much complexity sits inside that simple idea. 

Same but Different - a group activity

In groups of about 15 people, we were given a large sheet of butcher’s paper and asked to discuss some of the structures, institutions and processes that had been instrumental in defining our life experiences. We were then asked to draw the ones we had in common, creating a kind of collective life-journey map.

 

It took a little while to get started. None of us knew each other, so we began tentatively exploring fairly safe territory;

- we were all wearing glasses

- we had all attended school of some kind

Hospitals? Had we all been born in a hospital? 

Family. Religion. Media. Education. Work... 

Gradually, the conversation became easier and the map on the butcher’s paper became more connected. Lines appeared between ideas. New experiences were added. One thought prompted another. 

Then Bhiamie gave us the second part of the exercise: Using the structures, institutions and processes we share in common, discuss the differences that exist between members of your group. 

And that was where things became really interesting. 

The same experience isn't necessarily the same experience.  

Yes, we had all been born in a hospital - but not in the same countries or circumstances. One person had been conceived through IVF. 

We all had families - but those families looked very different. There were same-sex parents, twins, blended families, different birth orders and different experiences of parenting. 

We had all experienced education - but our educational journeys differed enormously. We had different levels of formal qualification. Some people had been the first in their family to attend university. Our experiences of educational institutions had shaped us in different ways. 

The more we explored what we supposedly had "in common", the more differences appeared. And something else was happening. In a relatively short period of time, I was learning far more about the people sitting around that table than I would have learned if we'd simply introduced ourselves by name, profession and where we came from. We weren't just identifying demographic differences. We were beginning to see some of the experiences and systems that had shaped how each person had experienced the world. 

This is where positionality comes in. 

So what is positionality? 

As Bhiamie explained during the workshop, positionality involves looking deeply at our lives and upbringing and considering where our ideas, approaches, inclinations and tendencies come from - and what that means for the work we do. Similar to unconscious bias

Importantly, positionality isn't only about individuals. It can also be explored by groups and teams. Bhiamie was speaking primarily to researchers: if a research team is trying to understand a complex problem, the people conducting the research are not somehow separate from that process. They bring their own histories, knowledge, assumptions and ways of understanding the world with them. Listening to him, I kept thinking: This doesn't only apply to research. What happens when we apply this to the work of government? 

Local councils in particular deal with extraordinarily complex problems. People working in councils make decisions about places, infrastructure, services, policies, regulations and community priorities on a daily basis. Those decisions affect people whose lives may be very different from those of the people making them. And none of the people involved in that work arrives as a blank slate. Each person brings professional expertise, certainly. But they also bring family, culture, education, economic circumstances, geography, politics, relationships, health, ability, age, previous workplaces and countless other experiences that influence what they notice, what they value and what they may take for granted. That doesn't make those perspectives wrong. It makes them partial. 

Positionality gives us a way to become curious about that. Instead of asking only: "What do I know?"  we can also ask: "What has shaped the way I know it?".  And, perhaps even more importantly: "What might someone standing somewhere else know that I can't?" 

Why this matters for Universal Design 

This is where I see a powerful connection with Universal Design. Universal Design asks us to design for human diversity. But it is difficult to genuinely design for diversity if we unconsciously treat our own experience of the world as the starting point. A path that feels straightforward to me may not feel straightforward to somebody else. A council process that makes sense to the person who designed it may be bewildering to a different person trying to navigate it. A community facility that works beautifully for one person may quietly exclude another. 

Positionality doesn't tell us what the "right" answer is. Nor does recognising our own positionality somehow allow us to understand everyone else's experience. What it can do is make us less certain that our own experience is universal. And I think that is incredibly valuable. 

Same but different 

I keep returning to that piece of butcher's paper. At first, we were trying to find the things that connected us. By the end, those same connections had revealed an extraordinary amount of difference. 

Same institutions - different experiences. 

Same systems - different journeys. 

Same world - different ways of experiencing it. 

For people designing policies, places, services and systems for communities, this is a critical thing to remember. Perhaps one of the most important starting points for Universal Design isn't asking: How do we design for everyone? Perhaps it starts one step earlier: "What am I bringing to this process - and how might other people experience this?"

Our group's positionality map: what began as an exploration of shared structures and institutions quickly revealed the complexity and diversity of our individual experiences.