Enriching your career through your personal interests

After reading my colleague @richardfayers post about taking time out of your day to reflect. I realised I’d been doing something similar; taking my hat off as a technologist and learning about other topics.

I’ve been reading lots of books about urban planning and architecture, such as ‘Cities for People’ by Jan Gehl and ‘Happy City’ by Charles Montgomery. I started reading these books because I was interested in the topic, but what I’ve found is that I can’t help but widen the view I take in my work as a technologist.

• I’ve learnt from the early modernist movement, that you can’t design and plan for every eventuality and it’s best to empower people to shape their own surroundings.
• I’ve learnt to appreciate how ‘cheap’ prototyping can be with technology, if mistakes are made we only lose time and don’t leave a scar on the physical landscape.
• I’ve reinforced my view to not blindly follow trends, but to use the correct tools to understand the root cause of the problem and implement the right solution.
• Similarly I’ve learnt that “It’s just the way it is” isn’t a valid answer and as humans, our physical and digital surroundings shape us as people and encourage our behaviours. Why not encourage good and productive behaviours over negative and wasteful ones?

Using empathy as a tool in technology isn’t new. It has been a crucial part of the user experience movement which has vastly improved the systems we interact with over the last 5–10 years, pushing technology further into our lives. Now I believe it’s time for us to empathise with other disciplines and professions, to help us become less technology-biased.

Technologists are often (rightly) accused of thinking that technology can solve every problem. The Silicon Valley arrogance of saving the world with ‘Smart Cities’ based on the assumption they’ll transform cities when in reality people and cultures have the ultimate impact.

A successful urban planning strategy which has been implemented in Holland and Denmark, chooses to understand the needs of the person and and not the technology. Jan Gehl created methods for urban planners to measure people and not just density of vehicle traffic, resulting in pedestrianisation and cycle infrastructure opposed to roads.

Blindly adopting technology for the sake of it can have long term negative impacts and sometimes even kill your business. Instead, it is better to take a step back, make sure you understand the root cause of the problem and are measuring the right things in order to implement the right solution.

So what can you do?

Spend time learning from other industries, how they are solving problems, their perception of technology and hopefully you’ll find common ground because we’re trying to solve human problems after all. Attend talks, read books and integrate with communities.

In doing the above, you’ll not only learn to approach problems in a different way but also as barriers between technologists and other professions are broken down, new and interesting opportunities will appear.

You’ll need to choose something you are interested in, experimenting and “dipping your toe in” can help you find this. I’ll leave you with a few ideas:

• Artists are experts at interpreting the world around us, see the ignored or unknown and replaying it in a way that people can understand and enjoy.
• Writers and teachers can help us to tell stories and share our skills with others.
• Linguists can help us understand how the language we use shapes the way we think.
• Actors can help us to empathise in order to portray the problems of those we are working for and Anthropologists can help us to measure and quantify this in a scientific way.

As for me, I’ll continue to read about the interesting world of urban planning and architecture. If you feel the same about another topic, I’d love to hear your insights.