Beautiful Interfaces

Today I am writing from a place of discouragement. 

I am discouraged because I realized today that I’ve been working at my current place of employment for more than 3 years now, and in that time, I have created not one single thing that another person is actually using.  And that’s not likely to change in the foreseeable future. But that that’s my motivation, that’s what it’s all about for me: creating awesome stuff for other people to use.

Money is important, but it isn’t motivation.  Writing reports and making PowerPoint slides may be “important” for one hour, but then they are forgotten; that’s not motivation either.  Even simply having great coworkers isn’t enough.  The reason why I do what I do is because I love creating awesome stuff for other people to use.

Let’s repeat that again, for emphasis. The reason why I do what I do is because I love creating awesome stuff for other people to use.

But my intention with this post is not to whine, but to consider. 

Is it possible to be in a bureaucracy but not of it?  Is it possible to be part of an organization that is slow and inflexible, yet not become deadened by it?  Is it possible to retain your motivation, your hunger, your desire to be the best that you can possibly be — your desire to create — after years of watching everything you do, every piece of work that you’ve poured all of your brain and heart and energy into, vanish into the ether and disappear?

In a bureaucracy no one owns anything; everything belongs to everyone, or to no one.  Is it possible, then, to still own the things that are in front of you, to take pride in the work of your own hands — and then to let go of it once it leaves your grasp, and turns into something unrecognizable?

Is is possible to remain detached enough to avoid falling into frustration and discouragement, yet engaged enough to continue to strive for excellence in everything that you do?

I sure hope so.  It might require the stubbornness of a mule and the enlightenment of a Buddhist monk, but I really hope that it is possible.  Because there are a whole lot of bureaucracies in this world, and a whole lot of broken systems to deal with.

If the only two choices are to give up or to leave, there’s no hope of changing any of that for the better.

[Edit: I took the word "manifesto" out of the title because I decided that it sounded dumb.]

When I think about my career and my interests, this phrase keeps coming back to my mind, and I’ve also made it the title of this blog.

But what do I mean by “beautiful interfaces” in the first place?  I think it can be summed up in 3 points.

1. Beautiful interfaces contain nothing unnecessary. A beautiful interface has no extraneous elements, nothing in it that detracts from a complete, coherent experience.  This doesn’t mean that there can’t be design elements, but it does mean that the design elements cannot be merely unthinking decoration.  Every part must contribute to the whole.  In otherwords, beautiful != mindlessly pretty.
2. Beautiful interfaces contain everything that is necessary. On the inverse of the above, a beautiful interface contains everything that the user really needs, gathered in one place and presented in an understandable, accessible manner.  Thought is put into creating flow and connecting disparate elements as necessary; the goal is to create an untroubled, uninterrupted experience for the user.  The goal is for the interface to “disappear” completely, because it works so well that it requires no thought.
3. Beautiful interfaces are backed by beautiful code. It may be possible to have a beautiful, effective interface that is created with terrible code, but I have to imagine that this is a fluke when it occurs.  Crappy code (both client-side and server-side) makes an interface slow, brittle, and inflexible.  It builds you into corners, so that you can’t respond to the client’s real needs, or to changing technical conditions that arise.  And I have seen first hand how crappy legacy code tends to hijack the concerns of the entire design and development team, such that everyone spends most of their time coddling the crappy code instead of refining the experience and improving the design (both of the UI and of the code).

I’m not saying anything new with all of this, I’m well aware.  And these are all aspirational points to me; I definitely don’t have any of this mastered.  I’m just an interested beginner who’s really into this stuff.

Life is too short to deal with ugly, tedious, argumentative interfaces.  Why shouldn’t the everyday things that we use be beautiful?