Looking Elsewhere

There’s a word in the Welsh language that you might have come across, part of that wonderful class of words that defy direct one-to-one translation into English: Hiraeth.

Broadly speaking, hiraeth is a deep sense of longing for some other time, people or place where you felt at home. It has been described as the lingering presence of absence; not really nostalgia, but a sort of gnawing, idealised homesickness to be somewhere else and be part of something else that no longer exists or, perhaps, has yet to come.

Hype-driven development. permalink

I—as I suspect was the case for many of us—entered the industry wide-eyed and optimistic. Finding my feet in tech in the early 2010s was exciting and everybody talked with naïve passion and a pioneering spirit about building positive change for the future. There seemed to be a real drive to hone our craft, to work tirelessly for the benefit of our users, for our work to be taken seriously as more than just programmers and designers. We were makers. Web Artisans. Shit, it seems almost laughably pretentious now. Somewhere along the way though, with a few success stories under the industry's belt, the profits just got too big and something fundamental shifted. Turns out that there's no time for craft when there's another round of funding to secure.

Now, at the mid point of the 2020s, it's as if the big-tech manifesto of "move fast and break things" has reconditioned an entire generation of makers to prioritise speed and efficiency over quality and care. With our standards lowered, the shift inwards has also become more pronounced. Where industry peers were once chatting about what they were making and for whom, we now seem fixated solely on what we're building with. We have sleepwalked into becoming an industry that makes tools for toolmakers; an unending tech-bro-robourus of solutions in search of problems, masking purpose with hype for the next big thing. And that hype-cycle is only getting faster. In just a few short years we've seen the crest and crash of countless industry darlings from JavaScript frameworks, to Blockchain and NFTs, right up to the current flavour-of-the-week: AI. But, as with every well-intentioned new product or clever solution, that-which-wasn't-considered becomes a vector for harm and AI finally sees the tech industry going after its own workers. Not content to have disrupted hospitality, taxis and delivery-drivers-as-a-service, companies are now axing their contractor budgets or laying off record numbers of staff as they chase the spoils of generative AI.

I want to make it clear that I am not against AI, much in the same way as I am not against hammers—they are both tools—but I am equally not going to advocate that you use your hammer to demolish the work of another artist for personal financial gain. It's how these tools are being used makes the difference and, currently, the industry is drunkenly swinging its ill-gotten sledgehammer at the foundations of our societies. In the face of this reckless pursuit of hype-over-craft, I can't help but find myself longing to be part of something that makes good on the industry's early promise of responsible change. Thankfully, I know I am not alone in this. This time last month I attended All Day Hey in Leeds and talk tended towards how we might change the course of the industry. As I've been gathering my thoughts in the days since, discussion online has also turned to many of same issues. At times it can feel like these conversations are eulogising our careers but I don't see any lack of desire to put the work in, rather a deep cultural burnout at the circumstances and motivations currently driving change in the industry. Despite it all, we still care.

It all begs the question, what might the future look like for those of us who still commit ourselves to craft? Fortunately for us, tech is not the first industry forced to defend itself against dubious practices and it likely won't be the last. Perhaps those industries that survived could be an example. What could we learn if we were to look elsewhere?

Raising the standard. permalink

When it comes to painstakingly technical, user-centred work there are few industries more famous than the tailor-made fashion houses of Paris. Training for years with traditional methods, pushing the boundaries of their craft, making individual garments with great precision and with only the finest materials; for many, they represent the archetypal "Artisan". But, for every artisan who cares about the craft, there's always someone else willing to compromise it for a quick buck. Throughout its storied history, the high-fashion industry has seen it all: corner cutting, poor quality materials, labour threats from mechanisation and rampant design piracy. Nowadays, we know many of these practices as fast-fashion, but they have been a thorn in the side of the fashion industry since the 1700s. That's not to say that the industry didn't fight back. Originally managed by a mercantile guild system these guilds would grow into an association who, by the late 1800s, would require that ateliers meet a baseline technical and material standard to be able to sell their garments within the city. Later, when piracy got out of hand, the heads of the industry implemented a further system of copy-protection by meticulously photographing and cataloguing each new design. Time after time the ateliers saw off threats to their livelihoods, but the industry's biggest challenge would come with the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany during World War II.

Seeing the strong reputation of tailor-made fashion within France, the fascist occupiers immediately sought to seize the industry's design documentation, dismantle the ateliers for raw materials and forcibly relocate those involved in production to Berlin, or far worse. In the face of the new regime, some ateliers immediately capitulated and dismissed their workforces. Many others did whatever they were able to safeguard their industry and those working within it. When liberation eventually came in 1945, the surviving ateliers of Paris, led by Lucien Lelong, came together again to codify their practices and ethics into law. In contrast to the association rules of the 1800s, this new legal standard would prevent any further attempts to undermine their craft by formally separating their work from fast-fashion practices. The law would not only ensure that only garments produced with certified materials and to exacting technical standards would be allowed to bear the name "Haute Couture", but they would also stipulate the location and number of employees an atelier must have, thereby safeguarding many of the ancilliary professions and practitioners that contributed to their work.

Fast-software. permalink

Chasing trends and profits, cutting corners and undermining skilled workforces whilst providing ill-fitting, broken products with no regard for longevity; the modern software world sounds a whole lot like fast-fashion. With that in mind, two aspects of the ateliers' pushback are particularly interesting to me - the first is the role of standards.

So far I have made many references to "craft" and "quality", but those terms can be hard to define. Motivations are more tangible. Compiling their accumulated knowledge in service of the customer allowed the ateliers of Paris to define precisely what "good work" meant for their industry. With such a baseline in place, should the primary motivation for producing work be anything other than meeting the customer's needs, the work fails by default. By also treating their standard as a living document, ateliers are able to focus on the betterment of their output, adapting and evolving their practice to meet the changing challenges of their industry.

It should hopefully come as no surprise that web industry is already home to several evolving standards for the semantic use of HTML and Accessibility. The web-standards movement and WCAG are the cumulative work of years of user-focused research and provide us with a jumping off point for doing work in service of our users. Meeting standards must be intentional though and for a long time developers have neglected them. This presents us with an opportunity. Though AI has access to a vast dragons-hoard of code, much of that code does not follow standards and, by consequence, the output of LLMs and design-tooling tends to be a chaotic rat-king of <div>s with no regard for semantics or accessibility. In this context it becomes clear that standards are a vital point of differentiation for craft-led practice. By design, these initiatives put the user experience above the developer experience. Following standards immediately shifts emphasis back to the "why" over the "how" and recentres the user within our work. If we collectively commit to following standards, we commit to "good work" by default.

There is a common rebuttal to the use of standards, in that it is simply too hard and too time consuming for one maker to amass the level of knowledge to follow these rules end-to-end. The problem with this idea though, is that it assumes that only one maker should hold knowledge. This is the second aspect of the ateliers' pushback - solidarity with adjacent professions. The heads of the industry understood that respect and accountability to one another would enforce their standards. To understand a bit more about how accountability to adjacent disciplines can enrich craft, let's take a look at another industry.

The case for blurred specialisms. permalink

To be honest, it's hard to keep mentioning the idea of web artisans without addressing all of the millenial-hipster jokes about organic, free-range TypeScript, artisanal hyperlinks and farm-to-<table> layouts. The thing is though, the farm-to-table movement and its reinterpretation of the restaurant industry is a genuine example of how solidarity feeds craft. With that in mind, let's just lean into it for a moment.

Widely attributed to the work of Alice Waters at Chez Panisse, farm-to-table dining presents cooperation as industry counterculture. In the face of questionable low-quality-high-profit practices overtaking the restaurant industry, the movement instead asked what might happen if they focused on sustainability, quality and shared knowledge. The big picture looks a little like this:

In order to provide their diners with the best experience, a chef will spend years honing their technical skills. At the same time however, the chef understands that their execution is reliant on a foundation of quality ingredients, so seeks out growers with deep knowledge of their terroir. Each knows their own limitations but, as their domains overlap, the chef and grower might then work together to enhance flavour or develop new cultivars that can stand up to different cooking techniques. With time, the process becomes reciprocal. The qualities of the grower's produce inspires the chef's work which influences the grower to apply their skills, which further elevates the chef. In this kind of scenario, it is not uncommon to see a grower's name featured prominently on a menu alongside the ingredients that they have worked hard to cultivate. The grower is not just a supplier, but respected as an equal artisan.

My takeaway from this concept is that, in order to master your own domain, the boundaries of your specialism will often blur with specialists in other domains. With a mindset of mutual respect, the whole process of making is not a cycle of hype, but one of intentionality and growth.

But should designers code, though? permalink

At this point you might quite rightly be thinking that blurred-specialisms sounds a lot like the T-shaped skillset touted by corporate leadership. You might also be thinking, "we've already tried that, how can that be a future for the industry?"

The difference, again, is one of intentionality.

A top-down, KPI-driven approach rarely cares about craft over profits. This means, sadly, that the common implementation of T-shaped workers expects them to carry out the roles of other specialists in addition to their own. Take full-stack development or the age-old "should designers code" debate as examples - From a c-suite perspective, these are matters of efficiency; surplus roles can be eliminated if one worker can step up to do two or three functions within the organisation. By that same logic, if AI tooling can be trained well enough, it has the potential to replace all roles. Remember, line goes up if wages go down.

The fundamental difference for the artisan model is that it operates in parallel, driven by the workers themselves. Each artisan retains full autonomy of their own specialism, but chooses to supplement their knowledge about how adjacent disciplines relate to theirs. Most importantly, this is done not with the intent to replace the other specialist, but to inform and elevate the quality of one's own work. This comes with a mutual accountability on doing what is right for the end-user rather than on convenience and expediency. Being an artisan is less about hoarding and regurgitating 'acquired' knowledge, and more about being part of a distributed support network of talented individuals. Success is a matter of community. To focus on craft is to stand on the shoulders of those who came before and lift those who come after.

When reading into these examples and others, I quickly came to see a common thread of respect, intent, ethical standards and community. These human qualities, as I see it, are key to differentiating the craft from the hype-machine - They simply cannot be replaced or replicated by LLMs or design tooling. In her fantastic post, "The promise that wasn't kept", Salma writes:

Real value is delivered through vision, creativity, experimentation, and using human brains to solve human-centred problems.

This really resonates with me. To dehumanise the craft is to remove the value of the work.

As an industry we often talk about 'the supply chain' in terms of code packages and modules that we depend upon, but I believe there is value in refocusing on the people who support us. Much like the couturiers and culinarians we've already talked about, the web industry was built on the skill, care and labour of people and what makes it great is those people. In the face of mass layoffs, it is no longer enough to show up and sweat the details of your own work. It's the time to champion each other. Taking inspiration from the examples above, that might look something like this:

• Prioritise working to standards. Standards aren't a restraint, they're a peer-reviewed baseline against which you can determine the quality of your work, especially when the people who use your works may depend on them.

• Take full ownership of what you control and freely share knowledge with those around you so that they may build upon your work and elevate it.

• At the same time, look elsewhere and allow youself to be inspired by your contemporaries in adjacent (or even unrelated) disciplines.

• Remember that your network is a strength. Give people their dues and allow them credit where their work has lifted your own.

• Stand up for adjacent disciplines when you see their knowledge and autonomy being infringed upon and, where work is directly affected in the form of layoffs, form unions and push back against unreasonable demands.

More than anything, go out find like-minded people. Where you can, go to meetups or local events and support initiatives such as Piccalilli's open collective that aim to give back to the community. For those readers in the UK, here are a few fantastic community-led events to get you started:

• All Day Hey in Leeds
• Frontend North in Sheffield
• WDC and Pixel Pioneers in Bristol
• State of the Browser in London
• FF Conf in Brighton

Hype Hope-driven development. permalink

Despite the questionable stewardship of our industry, the continued resilience of artisans in other fields gives me hope that the devaluation of crafting for the web is not inevitable, rather a matter of framing. Do I believe that any of the ideas presented here will be the miraculous savior of the web industry? Likely not, but then I equally do not believe that there is a single saviour to be found. Whatever the course, I do believe that we need to put in the work together, share our specialisms and then, perhaps, something will happen.

I'm in little doubt that, as long as there is big money to be made, the exploitative, VC-appeasing hype-cycle will rumble ever onwards. However, much in the same way that artisan-tailors and farm-to-table dining continue to work separately from the exploitative worlds of fast-fashion and fast-food, I have to believe that there can be another place—another market—for those of us who still care about the people and the craft. Not really a hard-reset, but a parallel fork of the industry that does right by its users and by the people working in it. Maybe it's misplaced idealism or perhaps it's foolishness, but I can't shake the hope of that place; some odd kind of hiraeth.