Over the past six months I’ve been asking lots of researchers the same question— mostly computing researchers but some others too.
Is your work about “influencing people” or is it about “solving hard problems”?
Like an either-or question. And then I give them permission to reject the question, or to answer in their own way.
I mean, how do you think about it? Is it one or the other? or a sliding scale? or can it be both? or— yeah I dunno, what do you think about that?
The first thing I notice is that most people say it’s a good question, and stop and pause for a second to think (not everyone though). It seems like everyone firmly knows their answer, but they may not have talked about it explicitly before.
I think people like being asked this kind of meta question, and they like that someone’s trying to listen to their perspective— that someone cares enough to ask them what they have to say. I guess it’s a form of flattery.
Hey, if you’re a researcher— if you’re some kind of artist, researcher, thinker, maker, whatever— blended fields explorer, then please let me know your answer to this question. My email is on todepond dot com
In all honesty, I was expecting almost everyone to say “solving hard problems” but literally no one did, or at least no one said it was their main goal. And maybe that’s just indicative of the kinds of people I respect enough to ask, or maybe it’s universal 🤷. With the release of this blog post I might learn more.
Oops I said it already.
Nearly everyone I spoke to is “influencing people”. Their work and research is supposed to impact the field, with various goals. Here are some examples:
One interesting point for me was “use case”.
In computing research, there’s often a question of real world “use case”. ie: Does the thing you’re building have a real world use case? or is it a real-world-useful-thing itself? or not?
And I thought that “use case” would be closely tied to the “solving hard problems” goal. But no, lots of people told me that “real world use case” was tied to “influencing people”. In order to influence people, “you need to demonstrate how this supports a real world use case”.
So you sometimes have to build a thing that serves a “use case”, but the goal is not for people to actually use it. The goal is still to “influence people”.
Sometimes people told me, “oh— well— if it ends up becoming useful, that’s great too, and maybe that might happen one day”. But I am deeply skeptical of genuinely useful products getting built by researchers. For me, it doesn’t align at all with what a researcher does.
A researcher explores the unexplored, usually part of a tiny team, and they simply don’t have the time or money or resources to SMASH BUGS, improve compatibility with different devices, or smooth out usability issues. That part isn’t rocket science. There isn’t a magical wand you can wave to solve accessibility, or any of these concerns. It just takes TIME and HARD WORK.
Why do you think tldraw works so well? Sure, it has a lot of experimental research work backing up its design and decisions. But it also has the thousands and thousands of hours we’ve all spent on SMASHING BUGS in it, and making it work well for different devices and users.
I would argue that a researcher shouldn’t be spending time on SMASHING BUGS or improving usability. There’s simply not enough money or resources. To solve those issues, I think you have two potential options:
I don’t see many researchers do those things. But I have seen some of them do it, and it really does work.
No. Of course, most people I spoke to are not trying to make something that’s actually useful, but they are trying to make something that could be potentially useful to a real world “use case”.
It seems like a large part of their work is drawing lines between their work and a “use case”. This link needs to be clear, and it needs to be talked about a lot. Sometimes, a research project gets initiated by identifying a “use case”, and then basing all investigations around that.
I think this is really stupid.
I think it leads to this top down approach where you restrict yourself too much from the start. There’s not enough exploration or out-of-the-box thinking. You don’t get to explore primitives, and find out what they may or may not be useful for. And your resultant tech is never general-purpose.
In my opinion, starting with a use case leads to less useful inventions than starting with primitives.
It’s like there’s an element of shame, of defence. Researchers feel like they need to point to real world use cases— to justify their work’s existence, perhaps to their boss— to their employer— to their financier or whatever. You can follow this chain all the way up to the top. This “top down” mindset gets passed down in a “top down” way (no surprises there).
I do wonder what it would take to convince some money-men to adopt a “bottom up” approach.
Or I wonder if a “bottom up” community-funded approach is remotely possible, or perhaps not. I mean, there are a few nice examples of this being attempted and it seems to be working(?) but I don’t know how it works in practice.
Some people did say that they care less about “use case”. When a person is doing more transformative work, such as making a new paradigm of computer interaction— or working on the forefront of current technologies— When a person is working on more primitive— abstract work, then they care less about direct connection to a “use case”.
Are some of the reasons I heard.
And in my opinion, these people are often doing the most closed-off and secretive research. They’ve locked themselves in a room for months on end, lying to themselves that they’ll be able to figure it all out by themselves, or with a small secretive group, or they’ll release their new website next month (for real this time).
Keeping your research secret or closed-source is very stupid, in my opinion. If you’re working with brand new primitives for computing or interaction or whatever, you need the public to use it while you’re still building it. You need hundreds (if not thousands) of people to use your thing. Let them play with it, let them poke it, let them break it and fork it, let them see it.
Share your scrappy fiddles! This is especially useful if you’re in uncharted territory, without a clear use case in mind. Who knows what your thing will be used for?
And if the goal is to “influence people”, there is far too much time spent on the prototyping the thing, and far too little spent on prototyping the communications.
Some people did say that they’re “solving hard problems”, but it was only a secondary goal. Quite a common response was that people felt ashamed to just be “influencing people”, often likening it to being an internet influencer or something.
So solving hard problems is a “must” for some people. You need to fill your quota— to pay your dues, so that people take you seriously. In this case, the real goal is still to “influence people” of course. And you’re doing it by “solving hard problems”.
Some people did identify their “problem solving” work as being needed though, beyond just “influencing people”. Perhaps there’s some blocker that’s stopping people from engaging with your work, or joining your movement… maybe you can figure out how to solve that blocker.
And of course, the biggest reason why researchers “solve hard problems”:
A lot of people “solve hard problems” because it’s fun. This includes people within research jobs, as well as former researchers, temporarily “funemployed” (as some people self-describe). I guess they’re still researchers though— they’re between-jobs-researchers.
I mean, it’s fun. I do think that research can be more impactful if it comes from a place of fun. Whatever you might think of them, researchers are people too and your work is more likely to impact them if they find it fun.
And maybe that’s when you’ll do your best work too— if you’re having fun, you’ll be more motivated to read that extra paper— build that extra prototype— speak to that extra person— go the extra mile.
Another point that came up was: Who are you trying to influence?
Some researchers said they want to influence other researchers. Some said they want to influence industry. No one said they want to influence the general public.
I have a fun answer to this. (keep reading)
One answer I got this week, which prompted me to wrap up my findings and write this blog post:
“Building community” is what they’re trying to do with their research.
I mean, at first, I wondered if that falls under the “influencing people” category. But no, I don’t think it does, because it might not involve any influencing at all. Or, in fact, you might end up getting influenced by other people instead (in a good way).
This answer really resonates with me, and I think I’ve finally figured out what my answer is.
And my answer is…
My answer is…
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