— thinking out loud — 3 min read
Technology like art is a soaring exercise of the human imagination. - Daniel Bell
Hi,
If you are new here or reading it first time,
I am Aman and this safe space is my own metaverse, do check out all the adventures, hope you enjoy your ride :))
In 2022, we are surrounded by a myriad of technical solutions for various types of problems that we encounter on a day to day basis, the penetration of technology as a medium to solve our problems is constantly increasing.
Kudos to people who identify such problems and hand out a general solution for all of us, solving any kind of problem through technology is almost similar to using magic in itself.
The more I think about technology and using it to solve problems, the more I observe, how a majority of problems in our lives can be categorized under UI problems.
Most of the problems that we see around us on a day to day basis can be classified as UI problems or just interface problems, there are so many services around us which can be made more effective by just giving them an interface, observing and identifying those services is the difficult part.
Technology's ability to provide interface and automate repetitive tasks has had a huge impact in the last 10 years, almost all the things that has contributed greatly to our convenience in the recent past can be considered as a UI solution.
Over the last 10 years web infrastructure has had a massive development, where it is now very easy for anyone to become familiar with the fundamentals of the web and build abstractions on top of it.
Bridging real world problems with technology and giving them an interface is not simple, It requires multiple iterations and a proper understanding of the service.
Solving for problems when variables are unknown is never easy!
I am very bad at math's but still someone like me can easily remember the fact that, to solve a quadratic you must have at least two variables but who are we kidding this is real world and how stupid of me to apply a math's analogy here.
I like to think of designing as the tool to make abstract things tangible, and engineering as a medium to bridge abstraction and convenience.
The importance of design as a tool to aid the development of solutions cannot be understated, it's a creative endeavor of coming up with a solutions for something intangible.
The rate of technological progress is increasing at a massive rate, DALLE 2 and stable diffusion have given us a glimpse of what it will be like, when AI becomes far more accessible and convenient to penetrate in our day to day lives.
UI blankets certain types of problems, which is usually a subset of more advance set of problems. We need more advanced tools, just solving for UI problems is not enough for convenience, to feel more like magicians we need tools which are far more advanced.
WordPress, Wix, Webflow are some examples of solutions where architecture enables abstraction, which further enables people to construct their own imagination.
As a frontend engineer I mostly work on UI problems, most SaaS businesses around us are just solving some kind of UI problems. I feel it is very important for us as engineers to understand what are the kind of problems we are interested to solve and maximize on that specifically, so that you can create impact proportional to your skills.
Engineering skills are just like magical attributes, it doesn't matter whether it's solving a UI problem or architecture problem, I think of them as both equally important for enabling convenience.
Personally If you ask me which kind of problems, I am interested in, my answer would be:
I am still figuring out, which problems make me curious.
This is what I have been thinking about lately :))