Software is a place

Recent projects have led me into the exciting world of enterprise software a world of robust systems such as HR, Procurement and Asset Management. It has occurred to me that the more projects I complete the more I become convinced — software is a place.

Hundreds of thousands of employees come to work every morning and immerse themselves in these environments — they know the shortcuts, have favorite places and areas they avoid. They create “workarounds” when the software doesn’t allow them to preform tasks in the most efficient way, they communicate with fellow employees, share information and materials. This experience, to me, more resembles a place (factory) than a set of tools (spanner).

If software is a place — UX designers are the blueprint creators, the architects of this space.

Drawing parallels between architecture and UX design is not new. The very core of our work — the concept of patterns is taken from the architectural discipline and was coined by the architect Christopher Alexander. And the title UX Architect is used constantly in the industry. But borrowing titles and using architectural terminology is not enough.

Our physical buildings contain our ideas about cities and public life. We strive to create expressive spaces where geometric purity of form and space, intersect together making a statement. Where beauty even if it is just a supporter of logical, functional structure has top priority. Our physical spaces are created with a goal to form relationships with their surroundings, whether people are inhabiting them or just passing by, between the inner footprint and the streets outside.

Now for comparison to this amazing space check the University’s website to see what emotion it evokes.

With our software, we for some reason, never follow architects’ approach to design. We rarely think of the overall composition of the different spaces within our system how they diverge into different entities, how to maintain their separate characteristics, and yet create clear, functioning, part of the greater whole. How social parts of our software interact with utilitarian and informational parts, how to create the right relationships between the “inside” and the “outside”, between the functionality and the context of its existence. Systems that even if they were created to preform complex and serious tasks will not educe a sense of hard work and sadness at first sight but optimistic, sophisticated, simple and beautiful experience. Not the guilty, paranoid, secretive world that represents our software today (especially enterprise software) but real places for real people. Full of exuberance and pleasure, that will be something to enjoy, not something to struggle through.

Creating software like this makes perfect sense. It makes business sense because it will drive productivity and adoption.

The upkeep costs will go down because a well thought, harmonious system that is built with a solid understanding of the whole landscape is easier and cheaper to maintain and update (one proof is the transformation of Gov.uk, check this short video).

How would such software look or feel?

Below is my initial interpretation, I am trying to take that elevated feeling of enjoying a great building and translate — what aspects of software would make me feel in a similar way? I hope to expand this list further with time as I learn more, and as we all challenge our understanding of what software can achieve:

• Software that is bright and airy and relinquishes multiple rows of complex navigation and architecture because it knows each user’s work role (manager, employee, HR, director) and each user individually (history, preferences, habits).
• A System that understands human nature and knows how and when to reward so to create simple moments of pleasure
• Software that knows where the complex areas are and breaks the complexity down, so there are no intimidating corners.
• A built-in intelligence that is sensitive to a change of environment when a user goes from communicating to learning to performing a high concentration task and performs this change smoothly.
• A Software that allows for customization in strategic places recognizing that people are individuals and all operate slightly differently
• A System that has a quiet conversation with the user giving, simple, honest 360 feedback to every action
• Last but not the least, shape: A System that while being a concise piece of functional design, an instrument for high performance is also an outcome of exploration of contextual, social and business relationships, that comes out of cultural traditions. For example — a car manufacturer’s essence is very different from a cosmetics company. Japanese car makers are different from German. This should be reflected in the design of their software. In architecture and navigation, in page layouts and interface elements, interaction design and terminology. Of course, curtain design patterns are paradigms, but they shouldn’t make all software feel the same in the way that having walls and windows don’t create identical buildings. Leaving this to the last stage — the visual design and adding company’s logo and colours is a partial solution and won’t create the desired effect, it should start at the core of a design.

Zaha Hadid once said — “through our architecture, we can give people a glimpse of another world, and enthuse them, make them excited about ideas.”

I strongly believe that we are living in times when we can achieve this same goal with our software.

To feel the contrast with this beautiful structure — Zaha Hadid Architects website see what emotion it evokes

We can start achieving this today if we fully commit to understanding the context in which our systems will operate, every aspect of a user’s workflow and its nuances, if we look at each element we put in with fresh eyes and asking ourselves — can this element be simplified? Can this element be smarter and know more? Can it communicate its purpose better? If we start asking ourselves — how we can make this beautiful?

For me it means user testing throughout the development phase ready to change and tweak. The next stage is after release — in software that is minimalist and provides intelligent set of components where every element on the screen serves a purpose for a specific user group, analytics becomes even more important. We need to monitor that all the functionality gets used, to learn the patterns of use, discover what functionality is underperforming investigate and improve.

I would like to look deeper into the mature discipline of Architecture and learn from its masters how to create places that will truly resonate with the users. That are both functional and breathtakingly beautiful. Software places that push the boundaries that have room for comfort, beauty, abstraction and joy. Buildings from architects like Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Frank Lloyd Wright and many others, which celebrate their purpose and are inseparable from their environments made me set a conscious target of trying to achieve the same in my medium.

I do not know what breathtaking software looks like and I definitely haven’t created one yet.

This is a journey. I will follow this journey every day taking small steps looking for a way to create relationships with users similar to the ones I described above. I will write about it as I go along examining what I have learned based on real projects trying to get real feedback based on metric and analytics where possible.

I will be true to the Hellenic oath that inspired the architect Richard Rogers — ‘I will leave this city more beautiful than I entered it’.

It was an oath that all citizens made and I would like to think it’s an oath we are all required to make.

If you are interested, I can recommend this great series on YouTube — 23 short episodes about amazing buildings and the thought process behind them (my favorite episodes: 3, 7, 12, 14,).

A talk about patterns that the architect Christopher Alexander gives during the ACM Conference on Object-Oriented Programs.

Finally, I also recommend the book “Architecture of happiness” by Alain de Botton.