BXT. Work vs. Uncertainty.

For years I’ve tried to put my finger on why I thought business is so much harder than design and why I figure design is harder than technology.

Then a friend of mine drew this for me.

It’s the Business, Experience, and Technology framework (BXT) and on the left you see how much work there is to do and why there are typically many more engineers than marketers when it comes to building a product but on the right we see the same three groups rated by uncertainty in their deliverables.

And it comes down to humans and computers. In technology you only have to deal with computers. Yes, networks are finicky and put enough frameworks and libraries together and you can spend days tracking down bugs but ultimately you have compilers and debugging tools and you can fix things for good. When it comes to design you are typically dealing with one of more people using your product and people are irrational. Predictably so in some cases which is great, but unpredictably so in others. And their habits and taste changes over time. But fundamentally, people are rarely trying to hurt your product. When it comes to the business side of things however, you are not only dealing with people using your product but frequently customers who are different form users with misaligned incentives and furthermore you have to take into account non-consumption, competitors, substitute products and whole range of other factors in what can often feel like a competitive game of prediction. You have to not only deal with getting people to pick your product over someone else but also with other people doing the same to you.