Trust in Beauty
As a science graduate, I’m always impressed by the beauty of nature…
Discovery
We find ourselves thinking or researching on something else all the time. When you start discovering the entire ecosystem, you’ll find what I’ve found so far. I have five keywords in my life. They are beauty, harmony, experience, complexity, and simplicity. I cannot separate one from another. But now let’s have time travel from the past to today by looking at my notes.
Trust in beauty has often, in the past, paid off. Newton’s theory of gravity was challenged by the orbit of Uranus, which didn’t obey its predictions. Urbain Le Verrier, and also John Couch Adams, trusting in the beauty of the theory, were led to propose the existence of a new planet, not yet observed, whose influence might be responsible. Their calculations told astronomers where to look, and led to the discovery of Neptune. Maxwell’s great synthesis, as we’ve seen, predicted new colors of light, invisible to our eyes, but also not yet observed. Trusting in the beauty of the theory, Hertz both produces and observed radio waves. In more recent times, Paul Dirac predicted, through a strange and beautiful equation, the existence of antiparticles, which had not yet been observed, but soon thereafter were. The core, anchored in symmetry, gave us color gluons, W and Z particles; the Higgs particles, the charmed quark, and the particles of the third family all as predictions prior to their observation.
Beauty is hidden in theory. I use the term unknown unknowns to describe this situation. Day by day, you discover new terms, and similarly, I use known unknowns to describe this situation. When you keep progressing, now you have known knowns. Discovery, in theory, will lead to beauty or something new. In the above examples, as you can see, theories led to the discovery of different things. I’m a science graduate, and I remember how long it was taking to prove a theorem. Sometimes pages of calculation, imagine the complexity on paper. But today we are able to say easily e=mc2. We always solve puzzles, and when you bring these puzzle pieces together, they create harmony. There is always an enormous amount of complexity in these beauties. Later, when you see the beauties running in complexity, you define simplicity and then say, this is an incredible experience.
Let’s have a look at the Milky Way Galaxy. It looks beautiful, right? This harmony wasn’t discovered in a second. It took years to build with beauties. When we look at the sky with naked eyes, we see just stars, moon, and the Sun. We had no idea how many planets, how many stars… are there. We created some theories, and started to look at the Sky with long telescopes to find out something new. Every day another piece was solved, and finally we have seen the harmony behind these beautiful objects. When you do the calculation, you understand the secrets of nature. You see the complexity, but also see the simplicity in reality. This is amazing.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
~Einstein
Discovery in Tech
Everything is beautiful, indeed. In today’s technology space, we do a lot of research to support our theories. Often we skip or lose ourselves in daily operations when we are building products. But don’t forget:
Beauties bring harmony,
and the experience in the complexity is the real simplicity.
Companies lose themselves on quarks of atoms, and then forget the galaxy. When beauties are not described very well, then there is no harmony. Because beauties bring complexity. Therefore, without complexity, it’s not possible to define simplicity. At the end, all are connected to each other and this describes the final experience. However, don’t forget, humanity didn’t explore the Milky Way Galaxy at once. It was an iterative process.
When I have a look at tech companies, my favorites are Apple and Amazon. Let’s start with Apple. Their journey has started years ago. Let’s have a look at MacBook. It includes numerous beauties (screen, processor, memory, board, software…), and each of them has its own complexity inside. When they are packed very well in a box, now it has harmony. You find it amazing. Because they create a harmony with these beauties, and offer simplicity in their complexity to the people. That’s why today people prefer Apple products first. Because people don’t have time and patience to spend on bad experiences anymore.
Let’s have a look at Amazon. Their journey has also started years ago. Today, they have products wherever they touched within the past. Their strategy was to cover all services they buy from others, and they managed it very well. Today, all Amazon services work with each other flawlessly. Experience on Amazon products are not same, but one of their company principle is at highest priority right now: Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company. Why should people go for an alternative and fight for good experience? When people find a great experience, they stick to it.
I don’t see a need to define beauty, harmony, complexity, simplicity, and experience anymore, but I see the need to define consequences of their absence. If you have beauties, but there’s no harmony between them, it’s not attractive. When you have harmony, but there’s no simplicity, it affects the experience badly. When people evaluate to buy something, they focus on experience today. If you don’t offer a great experience, sometimes it’s better to not offer it. However, this is an iterative process. So you should do it. When we are building products, creating experiences, we often rely on our observations and do a lot of assumptions. However, in real life, until you get your own results, you’ll never be sure whether it was correct or not. Therefore, trust in beauty is often hidden in theories.
