What are you doing here?

Whenever someone asks what I went to school for, there’s almost always the question of “How did you go from architecture to web design?” and it used to surprise me, because it didn’t feel like much of a leap when I did it.

Have you ever walked into a public library and tried to find the bathroom? It’s one of the underlying uses of the space - to support the public in whatever way need be, so it should be easy to find.

The web is very similar. If someone “walks” into your website and can’t find where they want to go, you have failed them. Users will treat web space very similarly to how they treat physical space - if they’re lost, they might go back, retrace their steps, see where they took a wrong turn. You don’t have to make it a long maze where there is only one way to get to something.

Architecture school is like Hogwarts

I think the confusion about how I made the transition might come from an outsider’s understanding of an architectural education. See, in architecture school, they don’t really teach you to build buildings - they teach you to solve problems. You are provided with a list of constraints, a location, a function, and potentially an audience. Then it is your task to combine all of these in smart and creative ways and build a defense on why your solution is best.

Product design is very similar - you have a problem with a set of constraints. The biggest difference is really in how often you speak with your users. When I started working in UI/UX, it blew my mind how helpful user interviews were. Suddenly, I wasn’t creating alone, in a vacuum. Instead, I had an audience to tell me where and when they were getting confused, and dropping hints on how to make it more clear. Now that I look back on it, it’s insane to think that I was designing entire buildings by myself, and only getting feedback from the same one or two people every few weeks.

Failing fast is cheap on the web

The craziest part of this is that it’s the more permanent art which doesn’t crowd source it’s clarity. When done properly, buildings last an extremely long time. Websites, however, are constantly evolving. If I get a button or a menu wrong, and it still gets built, it can quickly be remedied. If an architect gets circulation wrong, or egress, or natural lighting, it takes a lot of money and time to solve. If you’re doing data informed design, you can pinpoint these issues quickly, but with buildings, it can take years to see a problem - and by then, users might have already built their own way around the issue.

I have absolutely no regrets about my education, I feel it gave me an interesting perspective on design, and provided me with the confidence that I could literally build anything. I might go back to architecture one day, but for now, I’m very happy working on a more intimate scale, getting constant feedback, solving problems quickly, and finding solutions that feel customized even when they’re built for the masses. That’s the power of design.