Product Creation: Glass Blowing not Architecture

Metaphors matter. Metaphor shapes expectations. Expectations judge outcomes.

We constantly use metaphors to describe our work.

Plan. Design. Spec. Build. Architect. Develop.

It’s easy to think of product development as architecture. We architect then we build. No matter how much agile or lean indoctrination we’ve received, it’s easy to fall back to metaphors from architecture.

What if we used a different set of metaphors? What if we thought about creating products as more glass blowing than architecture?

Glass Blowing

Glass blowing is improvisational. A glass sculpture is the co-creation of a team working in a complex medium. Though the physics of molten glass could theoretically be forecast, the reality of liquid sand turning solid at lightning speed can’t be managed using equations. The glass blowing team must sense and respond in the moment to the glass.

“The manipulations that give rise to a finished piece can’t be fully specified ahead of time. Rather, the piece is the frozen record of a team’s coordinated finesse in responding to one other and to the glass. Having witnessed it’s making, I could only view the finished [piece] as … a fossilized bit of joint attention” — From The World Beyond Your Head, By Matthew B. Crawford

The team of glass blowers dances with the glass. They pour their collective attention into the piece as they dance. They work towards a goal, but must submit to the hard reality of their medium. They strive to shape the glass, but it is responding. Sometimes helping. Sometimes fighting back.

“It’s not so much what you can make that determines how good a glassblower you are — it’s what you can fix.” — Lino Tagliapietra, Master Glass Maker

Glass blowers dance with each other and the glass. The glass pushes back and the team adapts.

The Dance with the Product

We dance as a team with our product. The product starts out liquid. We can create anything we imagine.

As time goes on it become more and more solid. Some decisions solidify in code and user expectations.

We discover and learn as we dance with our nascent product. We adapt and adjust. The teams reflects the product and the product the team.

The product solidifies as the frozen record of the team’s dance.

The Dance with users

Through our product we touch our users and start another dance.

We offer pixels and hope users will join us, give us some of their precious attention, and dance. As they join us they push on some pixels and pull on others. As they push and pull we change the pixels.

Competitors are in the same dance. We strive to dance better and overtime build a trusting, creative relationship with our dance partners.

As we dance the product cools — from viscus to stiff and then fragile. Profit or investment let’s the dance continue. Resources add more molten sand or turn once stiff decisions liquid again.

Over time the product emerges as the only permanent record of this dance.

Learning to create new products is learning to dance with glass.

What do you think? What are the best metaphors to describe the work of creating new products & technology?

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For another post about metaphors and product creation see Lightning in a Bottle.