We only notice what works once it's gone
Don't overlook what's working on a quest to fix what's not
In last week’s post on form, context, and fitness, I wrote about how a poorly fit solution is more salient than one with good fit; it’s easier to notice when something’s not working than when it is:
When a design element causes friction, when users struggle with an interface, when a chair becomes uncomfortable after sitting for an hour, these misfits stand out clearly. By contrast, good fit often goes unnoticed precisely because it flows so seamlessly with its context. When something fits well, it feels natural, intuitive, and "just right."
Bad fits cause visible friction, while good fits slide by without our awareness.
Readers might recall GK Chesterton's famous fence, a warning against the destruction of existing systems without first understanding their purpose:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Chesterton's cautionary tale speaks to this good-fitness problem.
When a received solution works well, we don't notice its positive function. The proverbial fence was built by someone long ago to serve a purpose, one it served so silently that the reasons for its being have been lost. The fence sits there doing its job, downstream benefits taken for granted.
We accept the benefits as given without acknowledgement. We stop noticing the door handle that turns intuitively, the city street that channels foot traffic effortlessly, the vaccine that prevents diseases we no longer fear.
When there's high form-context fit, our attention simply moves on.
Invisible benefits
Systems we’ve built with decades (or centuries) of gradual work often hum along delivering invisible value. We’re blind to things that work precisely because they work so well. Their function becomes a background asset — a kind of infrastructural support network.
It’s especially evident in abstract systems of human interaction. Some systems, like traditions passed down through generations, exhibit a kind of long-evolved fit. They develop and adapt over time to meet a need, and not always the present or obvious kind.
A tradition takes root gradually as a solution to a tacit, historical, or moral need. Its purpose may no longer be legible to us, but its presence often indicates that some form of fit had been achieved. Religions and social structures and cultural norms develop in reaction to something missing, but our ability to explicitly explain their purpose sometimes evades us.
But when even a small aspect of a system is maladapted or inconvenient in a changing context (a metaphorical squeaky wheel), it calls attention to itself. People focus on that flaw, and — failing to perceive the deeper fitness of the whole — propose sweeping changes or removal.
In a streak of utopian hubris about a "better way" for cities to function, urban planners of the mid-20th century like Robert Moses ripped up the organic developments of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx to build elevated highways and planned housing projects. Are these functional? Could there have been a better way? Modern-day New Yorkers would say so.
With a delusional view of what was "better", and a lack of understanding about what currently worked, planners ripped-and-replaced the cityscape rather than evolve it piecemeal from the existing conditions outward.
It certainly makes the planner's job easier when they get to wipe the slate clean. The greenfield site is simpler to work with than a complex web of interdependencies and constraints to contend with.
But that web, even with its flaws, is full of functional life. The existing solution can't be replaced wholesale and retain all its invisible benefits.
We should address poor fit without revolutionary change
There's an irritation, a discomfort we feel when a solution isn't working. Even if it once had clear and known benefit, when that benefit stops being relevant, or is overtaken by new problems in the evolving context, it floats to the surface of our attention.
The reformer only sees the parts that aren't working well anymore and condemns the entire thing, skipping right past the benefits. Chesterton fences sometimes are impediments to progress, at least on some dimension. But the rebuilder wants to tear it down before understanding the existing relationships between form and context — between existing problems and the current solution. Perhaps on some dimension, there is a misfit between the fence and its changing context. But fitness is multidimensional. We need to do more than index on a single thing we don't like before we drive in with the bulldozers. The older and more complex the system, the more important we do our best to modify what we've got rather than risk second-system syndrome.
Misfit is obvious. But good fit is invisible. We should work harder to notice — and be grateful for — what does work, and consider how we might iteratively evolve what's working rather than being too utopian in our thinking.
This was beautiful.