Beauty is what we should strive for.
When you write a program, your main objective is to make it work for a set of inputs. This means you want to see a certain output for each of those inputs. The programmer has all of this in his mind. If the program does not work in a way he expects the output to be, he keeps modifying it until it behaves in a certain way.
Most human tasks can be abstracted at this level. If you are cooking a dish you have a certain idea of how the final thing should taste. If you are playing an instrument, your ears hear them and correct them until you find it pleasing.
Often there are others in the loop, other humans, who have expertise in telling if the food tasted good or the program is doing what it is supposed to do.
We all mainly differ from one another on this count. Our ability to identify something as suitable for a certain context. If you play classical piano music to an audience who are mostly pop music lovers, you practiced to play for the wrong audience. If you play a joyful music when everyone is looking for solitude you practiced for the wrong occasion.
This brings the topic of sensibility. People with heightened sense of the context generally can set the expectations optimally resulting in great usable work of art or commerce. This is when we call something as beautiful.
The world always tries to move towards a sense of beauty. Beauty is not something physical alone. It is not something that meets the eye only. It is a way of communicating subtly one’s thoughtfulness that has gone in doing something to its consumer.
When you watch a movie that brings various shades to its characters that the viewer can give different meaning every time they think about it, it gives the feeling of diving deep into the ocean every time and finding a new oyster.
When you make a product having a deeper understanding of its purpose, it helps to reflect that sense in its design, in its build, in the way it can be used.
Building something beautiful takes time. Because of this it is against the oft-repeated ‘fail fast’ mantra. Commercial success is a validation of the product market fit. It is not a validation that the user got the most beautiful product.
WhatsApp fit the need of millions to chat. It is not very elegant. But it is probably better than the rest in the way users have taken to it. It fit the need. A more elegant chat can come along and may not only fit the need but also make the users not complain. This is not an easy problem to solve.
iPhone is not just beautiful look wise but functionally as well. There is years or decades of understanding of user psyche that has gone into it. That understanding reflected in the outcome. It is irreplaceable in its segment.
Google search is beautiful for many in the way it gives the results. But there can be a more nuanced thinking in that space that can replace it one day.
Getting product market fit and making it beautiful is a very hard problem to solve. But when it comes, it brings the ultimately scalable business sans competition.
Remember that everything is waiting to become beautiful in this world.
