Why Details Matter
The abstract-to-specific pipeline
As a self-proclaimed Designer I am always curious to hear about peoples' day-to-day experience with technology. I was asking about rostering at my friend’s workplace: they use a custom-built piece of software that models constraints on each shift and lets you (the administrator) resolve them step-by-step. Naturally, being software-brained, I suggested automating the allocation process, they replied:
"Then I wouldn't be thinking about each decision. I wouldn't understand why I made those choices or how the choices fits together if someone asks me."
How can you know what you're doing if you're ignorant of the details? I’ve seen this tension often: avoiding "busy work" undermines understanding. It challenges a core assumption in software: that removing steps and automating processes is strictly beneficial.
The Value of "Busy Work"
The tech industry has its sights fixed on "taking the work out of work" at larger and larger scales... but where does that lead? What if engaging with specifics, making individual decisions, and confronting edge cases is precisely how we develop expertise?
Engaging with the details is what "hydrates" our abstract mental models1. Tools and techniques are only as useful as your ability to apply them, which can only be learned first-hand.
This is craft. Gradually building a mental structure by repeated exposure to relevant details. An expert isn't simply “following rules,” they’re developing a contextual understanding of themselves and their environment.
Abstract-to-Specific
By repeatedly bringing intentions into reality, experts form a ‘wisdom’ based on their experiences. That wisdom is a chain of mental models spanning from abstract-to-specific. Through their practice, experts build, maintain and traverse this chain until it becomes second-nature.
Experts' are more effective when their tools keep them connected to the details. When tools impose leaky abstractions or obscure crucial details, they disrupt the formation of personal intuition. Rigid ‘frameworks’ of thought can obscure the insights of specific instances.
It is crucial that different people form different intuitive models of their domains. When interacting, they explore the complementary and contrasting aspects of modelling the same reality. The world is too complex for any single model to capture. We need these partial views derived from individual experiences; together, they help us navigate the incredibly complicated abstract world we've created for ourselves.
Today’s software has an increasingly normalizing effect on the way people work, think and communicate. We’re losing our ability to collectively make sense of reality.
If the details matter so much, how should our technology change? How should we use technology? I think that software tools should help us make sense of our lives, rather than telling us how to live.
Software is a portal to what we think about—the interface is just a way to manipulate mental objects and explore understanding. To me, personal computing implies systems that allow users to explore their natural thought processes, while providing enough structure to make the informational space navigable.
Design Takeaways
My (lofty) goal is to design the future of personal software. It might take a while to get there but we can start with some principles that have fallen out of my specific experiences:
Optimise for understanding, not efficiency. Tools should aid the formation of mental models rather than bypass thinking.
Embrace specificity, allow organised-chaos. Details aren't concerns to abstract away—they're the whole point. Meaning (and ultimately wellbeing) come from our specific experiences, not abstract data types.
Design for traversability. Minds want to move fluidly when solving a problem, jumping between patterns and specific instances.
Allow plurality in conceptual models. No single abstraction system serves all needs. Different contexts demand different models and the strength of data is that it can support many views.
Provide (minimal) structure. Complete freedom is paralyizing; offer people inspiration, not prescription.
✌️ Ben
Stuff I’ve Been Thinking About
On the need to sustain your creative drive in the face of technological change
A beautiful loop: An active inference theory of consciousness
(which otherwise come to us freezedried in podcasts and multi-hour video essays)