I recently had a conversation with a group of friends after having walked past the Barbican in London. If you have not seen this building, it might be worth your while, but be prepared for Architectural Brutalism, concrete and all. The part where the conversation became interesting was when we started talking about the elevated walkways that had been built about the same time. It was an attempt by some idealist to lift society and the pedestrian above the messiness of the streets.
Except it just exacerbated the messiness of the streets, by attempting to segregate the “elevated idealism” from the mundane. The elevated walkways removed people from the experience of walking on the street – the shops that were there, the natural ground on which we walked. You can argue that many of the walkways and bridges we walk are elevated and separated from highways and railway lines below – I don’t disagree, but they were built for utilitarian purposes, out of need and how people wanted to use the space, and evolved through the usage patterns of the city. A city and its architecture is an evolution of how people use it rather than what is imposed. As a trained architect, I know this well and have watched portions of cities evolve in the small period I have been alive – evolve to be more and more what people want, and what they do not want goes unloved and torn down.
The whole Barbican conversation just caused a terrifying lightning moment. The parallels between the blind idealism of that period in architecture collided in my mind with the blind idealism in some tech companies I know. The ideal that “engineering led” (modern architectural ideals) can solve everything. All of it forgetting the human element – the human experience, and human preferences (biases and all). Humans revel in the intimacy of decoration and unusual. They want to be connected to what they do (or where they walk).
Do not confuse my statement as being Luddite. I recognize the many engineering marvels and leaps come about because of hard engineering – a focus on exposing people to new ways of doing things, new solutions, and innovation. However, if you forego understanding the experience of humans, you are doomed to a path mostly of failure. Mostly, because sometimes you’ll stumble by accident (without realizing it) on something that shifts people and society and it appeals to them and their needs. That will however be by accident. Engineering cannot solve all of society’s problems. Because society’s problems are caused by humans, not by engineering. Solutions that survive are those that appeal to humans and give them comfort, appeal to their biases, and satisfy their human needs. It’s about how people will love and embrace (walk on) it.
Why am I writing this on a Security (sort of) blog? Well, because I too often see the line “Engineering led”, and hear the people talk about what engineering marvels they have created. The solutions that they have created however are internally engineering marvels, but lack any of the outcomes that the consumer of the service expect. The engineering is a marvel (for an engineer), but it doesn’t deliver the experience the consumer wants or needs.
Then I look at how people have adopted or not adopted them, how the solution only thinks of what that narrow group of engineers thinks is important (because they are solving from their mindset). What they miss are the real-world applications outside of their bubble, and how people see an opportunity to apply it. As over-used as this example is, it is still appropriate: Apple designed an iPhone that appealed to the simple concept of a handheld device that could do so many things that you wanted in your hand. The Apple Watch in some ways continues that vision. People use it in the way that they want, and Apple’s view was to give them a platform to build on and use in their own way (even if it is a closed ecosystem – note that “use it in their own way” is focused on the consumer of the device and their perception of freedom or use, versus the developer’s).
Software solutions that are built with solely the engineer’s vision of what is right will fail until they experience the reality of what the industry uses their software for – the human usage, the human thinking, and the interaction it presents. Find out how people do things now – understand why they do them that way, and then look for ways to make things better – from their point of view. The goal is to create an outcome and the experience. Great experiences that change lives, that overcome challenges, that make things possible are what people want. A great engineering solution that gives nothing back to a society as an outcome is a waste of energy.
Elevated walkways are ugly because underneath them people urinated, and dirt collected. People didn’t like that (but that didn’t stop elevated walkways, it just made a problem even worse). Ultimately they failed because they removed the urban experience of crowded streets, a connection to the ground, the interaction between people, stores, and an existing system of stores and spaces (parks, gardens). People want that interaction. Yes, they dislike the immediate proximity to noxious fumes from cars, but they want the access to buses, to transport, and to the activity that still has to happen at the ground level.
Engineering led solutions risk this same fate unless they understand the connections they are attempting to change and the outcomes they are trying to achieve through the lens of their consumers. Listen and understand the people and systems that will use it and build for them. Idealism has few rare successes. An injection of realism and humanism makes them far more likely to succeed.