On Simplicity #8 • Identity
Good software helps us do things more conveniently and efficiently. Great software helps us do things we couldn’t do before and become people we couldn’t be before.
A quick announcement before we get into today’s topic:
I’ll be starting an online discussion series about Simplicity. The first session where we will be discussing the initial article On Simplicity… will take place in a virtual Zoom room near you in about two weeks on Thursday, 14th March. Check out the meeting invite for time and details and to sign up.
Looking forward to hear your thoughts and questions about simplicity!
I’ve been talking a lot about identity in the recent posts, and in hindsight I’m not sure I have explained this important piece of the puzzle well enough. Let me try to do that today.
What do I mean by “identity” — especially in the context of software?
Why does software need, or at least deserve, in my view, a strong identity?
What does that even mean?
“Identity” doesn’t stand for some grand, complex, esoteric concept with lots of baggage and social-scientific debate attached to it. Instead, I mean it in a rather straightforward, metaphysical sense. In other words: If you look at Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for “identity”, think less social science and more philosophy or even mathematics.
Identity just means sameness — that which makes a thing identifiable to us as the exact same thing. As Wikipedia puts it in Identity (Philosophy):
In metaphysics, identity (from Latin: identitas, “sameness”) is the relation each thing bears only to itself.
Categorization (again)
In Finding Meaning in The Nature of Order I talked about becoming with the example of a tree. Imagine a tree in your garden, or in a park close to where you live. There are probably countless trees all over the place — that’s talking about “tree” as a category. This is a categorical identity. It doesn’t really matter which specific tree, just a tree. You know what makes a tree a tree, intuitively, so you know what I am talking about. You have the eidos of a tree in your mind. You may be able to put together a feature list and describe what makes a tree a tree, but that quickly gets rather complicated, if you want to be precise. But intuitively, without thinking about it too much, you know what I mean.
However, I asked you to imagine not just any tree, but a specific tree in your garden or park. Perhaps the one in your parents’ house that you built a treehouse in when you were young. Or that peculiarly shaped tree near that large meadow in your park that you like to sit under in the summer.
That tree is unique. There is only that one tree that captures this exact meaning. All the other trees are also trees, categorically speaking, but only this one tree is the one we mean right now. There is no replacement for it.
There is something on top of its categorical tree identity that makes this one instance special. Again, intuitively, that is easy to understand. If you want to precisely explain what exactly makes it unique, it could again become quite complicated. But we don’t have to. You know exactly which tree we’re talking about.
What works for trees, works for pretty much everything, including software. You may think of an image editing program categorically, or you may think of Photoshop, Gimp, or Paint specifically.
The key here is how you think of it first, intuitively. If your first thought is “image editor” — categorical — you don’t seem to care much about which one. Perhaps you have a very generic image editing task (problem) you want to get done (solved), and it doesn’t really matter to you which software ultimately gets the job done. So you need to decide which one to use, which could be an arbitrary decision, based on features and how they function, or something based on what’s available to you on your preferred platform1.
But some people think “Photoshop!” first. They go straight to a unique identity. There is no “which one should I use” step. That is immediately clear. So they just fire it up and get their work done.
If you care about the software you build, you want your users to be of the second kind. But for that to happen, your software needs to do something more than just check boxes of what makes it part of its category. It needs to have its own unique identity that is strong enough to make people ignore everything else in that same category.
The kicker is: I propose that the way we develop software right now is rigged in such a way that even if we begin with a strong identity, we steadily keep working towards a weaker categorical identity, inviting our users to compare our creation to what else is out there. It’s almost like we’re begging to become replaceable.
Growth / Development (again)
Things change. All the time. Yet, we have no problem identifying the same thing even as it changes in all kinds of ways.
Back to the tree: Notice how you have no problem whatsoever to identify the same exact tree, even though it likely changes significantly throughout the year. It may change its color completely in Fall. It may lose all its leaves in Winter. It may grow different ones back during Spring. And over a longer period of time it may slowly change in shape and size. But it will always be the same tree.
That means we must be able to change software without it losing its strong unique identity. If the tree can add and remove different colored leaves and change its shape and size without losing its unique identity, we should be able to change features and functionality of our software without losing its unique identity.
You might think: “Sure, that’s what we call a brand!” And that’s not wrong. But don’t get carried away by an oversimplified explanation that leads straight into the fallacy of “It’s all just clever marketing.” That’s exactly not what it is.
What’s the tree’s “brand”? Does it have a clever marketing agency? Not really. Well, I suppose you could consider nature a pretty clever marketing agency. Nature surely has figured out how to press all our buttons in the right way. It created all these buttons.
The tree’s “brand” isn’t a property of the tree, something you could endow it with somehow, like a good marketing agency does with products. The tree’s “brand” is in the relationship you have with it. It’s your memories, your experience with that particular tree that makes it strongly unique to you.
If you built a tree house on it as a kid and then played in that tree, you certainly made some good memories. You had great experiences with it. In a way the tree afforded you these memories, it provided the “functionality” to make them come into existence.
That’s of course not how we think of it. Nor should we. But perhaps the way we should think of software is: How can it be more like the tree?
Existential modes (again)
And this is what the difference between the having and being modes is about.
In the having mode it’s all just about categorical function — utility and convenience. It’s transactional, result-oriented. Does it do the thing I need it to do, and does it do it conveniently? It’s about manipulation and control. It’s about solving problems. It’s about effectiveness and efficiency.
If that’s all that defines your identity, you’re replaceable with anything that satisfies the same requirements.
Yes, in reality there will always be a little sprinkle of uniqueness on top in the form of a unique feature, a slightly easier workflow, or a better “user experience” that we like to highlight as Unique Selling Points. But we have it backwards. That’s just desperate marketing trying to make something rather unremarkable look more special than it is. It works. That’s why advertising is such a big business. But it’s not sustainable. It doesn’t give your product a truly unique identity. And you know that your customers figure that out eventually. And so you keep on inventing new stuff that they haven’t figured out yet.
The most difficult thing to understand is that this doesn’t make the having mode the “bad mode”! We need useful and replaceable things that solve problems for us. We want convenient utility. Sometimes we want to just transact without much regard for how something happens and who makes it happen as long as it happens. And that’s all fine. Even good. There is nothing wrong with it. As long as we are aware and don’t get confused.
Sometimes, we need more than just a categorical solution to a problem. Sometimes, we don’t just want it to be done. We want to become better. We want to transform ourselves. We need something transformational.
In the being mode, it’s all about unique development — insight and learning. It’s experiential, process-oriented. Do I enjoy this? Does this make sense (coherence), is it useful (purpose) and important (significance) to me? It’s about transformation and growth. It’s about making memories. It is about making meaning. This is becoming.
You can’t make your product have these things as if they were properties that you can check off one by one from a backlog. You can only grow your product together with its users to evolve, complexify, unfold into something that affords them to have delightful and surprising experiences that they enjoy and will remember — experiences that transform them. That is how your product becomes truly unique to them.
Becoming (again)
As they explore and discover what they can do with it, it explores and discovers what they need and want. This is reciprocal realization leading to a product they can fall in love with. This is building an environment that makes sense to them (coherence), affords them (purpose), and is valuable to them (significance). An environment they want to be in. This is creating belonging.
Great software, I’d argue, doesn’t just automate stuff for us so we don’t have to deal with it (although that’s useful). Great software doesn’t just provide us with convenient utility to make our lives more comfortable and efficient. Great software augments our intellect, amplifies our ambition, and enables us not only to do things we couldn’t do before, but to become people we couldn’t be before.
Mirror of the Self is a fortnightly newsletter series investigating the connection between creators and their creations, trying to understand the process of crafting beautiful objects, products, and art.
Using recent works of cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and design theorist Christopher Alexander, we embark on a journey to find out what enables us to create meaningful things that inspire awe and wonder in the people that know, use, and love them.
If you are new to this series, start here: On simplicity…
The previous series starts here: 01 • A secular definition of sacredness.
Overview and synopsis of articles 01-13: Previously… — A Recap.
Overview and synopsis of articles 14-26: Previously… — recap #2.
Another great way to start is my presentation Finding Meaning in The Nature of Order.
Hmm… how do you feel about your platform of choice? Categorical? Or rather strongly identified?