Engineer Like an Artist

Designed for Users and the Bottomline

I am an artist and an engineer. It may be comfortable to put art in the ornamental category; however, this is a mistake.

Art is provocative as much as it is decorative. My version of art is both. Art is exploring the edges of new mediums, finding intersections, and devising new possible worlds. Art follows engineering principles, but the goal is often where the disciplines quickly diverge. Together art and engineering are a double-edged sword with parallel blades, equally capable individually and doubly mighty in tandem.

Your experience when interacting with a tool is the user experience. This flow from beginning to end was designed for you, the user. The experience may be frustrating, satisfying, completely neutral, or inspiring.

We interact with software via steps prescribed to us via the user interface. If you are a developer, you interact with backend tools and APIs, which are still user experiences, though in this case, developer experiences.

Every product may not benefit from artful design, but in many cases, a truly engaging experience is the differentiator in a saturated market.

Let’s pick on Facebook for a moment. Nothing about the user interface of Facebook is inspiring. I suspect that Facebook intentionally keeps the user experience simple and minimal to minimize overhead as they are price sensitive, with the business model relying entirely on capturing and reusing data (yours and mine) and advertising dollars.

Nothing in Facebook’s business model is driven by our satisfaction with the user interface or delighting us as platform users. Facebook is the dollar store Mead Notebook you can pick up anywhere and use the same way. There is genius in this approach from a bottom-line perspective. There is no brand loyalty because it is a thing of utility; everyone is simply there. If a critical mass of Facebook users left for a new and better product, this would be a tipping point, perhaps the end for Facebook under their existing business model.

Inertia is Sticky

Simply put, Facebook relies on the incredible stickiness that is inertia. The same anti-force kept Internet Explorer (IE) in the top browser quadrant for over a decade simply because IE was the default browser on all PCs, and most people accepted the defaults. Inertia allows the experience of everything that once was thoughtful to decline into the most basic and utilitarian version of itself. Air travel is another excellent example. Research images from commercial planes from the 1980s, and you will see what I mean. People used to be excited about air travel; they dressed up and expected to be treated like they had bought into an experience. If you have flown on a plane in the past ten years, you know that nothing about flying on today’s commercial planes is exceptional. I will make an exception for a recent redeye JetBlue flight from Sacramento to Boston; wifi the entire flight, comfortable seats, and clean! I was bowled over. I also hear that there are fantastic experiences to be had on board several non-US carriers.

A force must be applied to counter inertia. In our free market system, the force is competition. I will not pretend to have the macroeconomic chops to dig into how subsidized markets are not free markets and thus disincentivize competition. The hill is just steeper when the headwinds against you are systematic. The water of the ocean requires the swimmer to perform the same movements as the water of a swimming pool.

Beyond the Sea of Defaults

The journey started a couple of years ago. I was already burnt out from years of the grinding delivery cycle that is life in tech. I love building software, but there is a necessary pause between long, focused periods of work that we do not allow for in the field. Nothing is compelling about line items that do not impact profit or bottom-line numbers. Human quality is dynamic and not measurable in the standard model.

I hated to hear this, but she was right. Our mind is an ocean of information, and different depths and terrain all matter and comprise the entirety. For example, marathon runners will destroy their abilities if they overtrain and fail to train the body with proper diet, rest, etc.

Software developers are generally mid-marathon all of the time. Early in my career, there were more frequent pauses for learning via conference attendance or up-skilling via workshops. Technical learning sparks different pathways in the brain and allows for a micro-break from producing while the brain consumes new information and formulates new ideas.

Typical to the lifecycle of an engineer, the more senior you become, the more you are expected to produce without pausing. Likely, you will have junior team members under you as you advance. If you are like me, your team becomes your extended family, and you care a lot about these people.

Unending is the demand for delivery from the team. You will end up treading a balance between keeping your team’s morale in good care and ensuring timelines are met with as few bugs as possible. With excellent leadership, strong communication, low-stress teammates, and collaborative stakeholders, this will be a ballet you will pull off, and you can take two weeks of vacation per year and a handful of wellness days and pay for the things you want and more.

That was my life for the latter part of my career in corporate tech. Something shifted in me, and I don’t think it was a particular job or project but rather the culmination of years of juggling and running without cross-training my brain.

Discomfort is Momentum Calling

I tell my children that stubbornness is a huge asset if you learn how to wield it.

My internal self-protector is thankfully stubborn because she shut the show down for me. I did not know what was happening to me when my landing gear deployed mid-flight and told my overworked self that I was done like a turkey timer at Thanksgiving (for non-turkey eaters, or non-turkey knowers, this is a small plastic button that pops up when the meat is cooked).

Burnout comes in waves but the biggest and most frustrating symptom was apathy. Passion is my normal, apathy is the enemy of everything creative and interesting. I felt apathy creeping in like the great molasses flood of 1919. A historic event about which I was informed from a young man who had not slept the previous night but was working as an attendant at a Reno, NV hotel concierge lounge. I wanted some eggs, he wanted to tell me the story of the great molasses flood. Being open to novelty dies when apathy takes a stronghold.

I needed a better user experience for the way I was working. What this meant for me was to craft a professional path with room for creativity and connection.

It was time to choose my own adventure and step outside of the defaults. I was about to upgrade my user experience. Switching business critical tools is a nightmare for enterprise customers, a headache for individuals, and a rollercoaster for entrepreneurs. Deciding to go your own way after a career in corporate comfort is no different. Thankfully, there are resources to help guide the way and with enough self determination and finely honed stubbornness, the path becomes plausible and pretty soon the only path.

Space to Dream

I have been crafting digital videos for creative exploration for about fifteen years. As technology has improved, I no longer overload the CPU of every computer I challenge to handle my multi-layered video renderings. Now I can use my phone and the computer is for larger projects. As we evolve, we must iterate. We must seize the opportunity new technology provides. If we are stuck in apathy fueled inertia due to burnout, the only seizing we can muster at the end of our day is whatever vice we choose to numb our numbness.

If you are in this place, please seek help from a counselor, coach, or mentor. The depth of mental illness brought on by career burnout is as deep as any depression I have felt. Your mind and body are telling you that change is needed. Please listen to yourself.

We must have space to dream.

When I am making art, I am lost to myself and connected instead to the feeling of whatever I am creating. When deep in the code or design of a system, I can find flow in the same way as in art making. Flow-state is a spiritual experience for me and many of my peers. We crave the still and silent movement of ideas, unfolding like paper flowers in our mind.

For all creators, there must be time for flow. For truly great products, flow must be part of the design process. Driving toward deadlines exclusively will assure dead products cross the finish line. Indeed the criteria of done may be met but the criteria of a truly engaging experience for the customer will likely be left out.

The measurement is the problem in many cases. You cannot measure the beauty of a painting nor the feeling it conveys. Though we cannot measure these elements, we do not negate their value in art. When we create, we put our whole selves into the creation.

I believe it is time for more of us to approach software design with the same passion that we employ in art making. Cross discipline training to increase stamina in technical fields will prove more useful now than ever.

AI solutions will replace the boring parts of our work, and yes, even some of the more stimulating parts. Coding is fun, it is solving puzzles, AI is going to kick our asses at anything that is like a puzzle.

Smashing disparate ideas together is creativity and commercially available AI is not generalized AI and therefore not going to kick your ass at unprompted innovation.

If you are worried about being usurped by a chatbot, don’t stay in inertia, leap into momentum.

Recommended Reading on Beehive