lucidfox

Once upon a time, there were two houses standing across a street. They looked quite different, and their residents didn’t meet each other much—only a few times a year did they meet on the Freedom Square to discuss things like maybe painting entrances the same color, so passers-by don’t get confused about the different looks. Sometimes those discussions actually led somewhere.

One resident, whose name isn’t important to our tale, once lived in house one for a few years, and a year ago she went to house two. She heard, of course, that this old crumbling house on the other end of the town was recently renovated with blue glossy walls and all-new windows, but she left that particular one years ago and had no intention of going back. (And the last time she went there to visit her parents, she found out that on the inside it was mostly the same old smelly stuff, just hastily swept under the carpet in most places.) One day, after a vacation, our resident returned to house two to find out it was torn down and rebuilt, and now looked promising both on the outside and on the inside—however, she also saw that most of its rooms sported nothing but bare walls, so, joining a pack of similarly minded residents, she packed her belongings and went back to house one, where her heart always belonged anyway.

And thus, another year has passed. One day, however, after returning from work, she suddenly found the house surrounded with yellow tape and “Under Construction” signs. The chief architect gathered the residents and explained that they learned from the history of house two, and so they were going to renovate this house one patch at a time. He showed some mockups, which most people agreed looked promising, and so they went their own ways, careful not to trip over newly dug pits in the ground.

Since then, our resident grew more and more confused with every passing month. Everywhere she went, she saw builders bickering about the direction of the effort, with everyone insisting on things being done their way. One day, when passing through the house’s garden, she overheard the following conversation:

Designer #1: [Wearing an orange shirt] Look at this garden—it’s grown old and unattended. The bushes are all different, some have overgrown, some look sickly. I say we demolish this garden and make another one on the same spot, give each plant a strict square spot, and my gardeners would tend to them.
Designer #2: Actually, on our New and Improved plan, it clearly shows that after the garden is destroyed, this spot is going to be cobbled with flat black bricks. We’re planning to make an all-new different garden on the other side of the house, so we have to reject your plan.

Six months passed, however, and the renovation was nowhere near finished, so the chief architect announced it was going to be delayed for another six months (and showed a different design for the final look, completely different from before). In the meantime, our resident thought she sort of liked the orange-shirted designer’s idea of bringing the old garden into shape, and went to ask what a well-known news announcer who lived in the same house thought of the idea. The response was:

“Pah! The only people who care about the new garden now are those wearing orange like you! Clearly, if I supported the idea I’d have to dress the same, and I like my grey and blue, so for now I’ll stick with the old garden.”

So our resident decided to wait again until the house was finished. However, a month before its new deadline, the chief architect gathered everyone yet again and said it was going to be delayed for six more months—and showed yet a third mockup, completely different from the other two, yet curiously similar to what the orange-shirted team was building a street away. Meanwhile, the construction effort continued to deteriorate. Keeping along with the “one patch at a time” motto, some floors of the house switched to using a newly-built different elevator, which was like the old one but different (and its cabin evidently had less attention put into decorations). So whenever she wanted to go to a floor, she had to learn, often by trial and error, which of the two elevators to use.

Finally, she decided that while the construction effort was still underway, she could as well redesign her own apartment to go along with the times. Seeing how her bedroom looked especially messy, she threw together a mockup for a new arrangement and wondered whom she could discuss it with. She was pointed to some big-name professional designers who helped renovate the exterior of the house, so she went to them with her plan. The following discussion ensued.

Resident: Look, I’ve got some plans for a new bedroom, and they’re shaping up nicely, so I wondered if maybe you could offer some suggestions to tweak it before I go along with it? I know you people are big on minimalism, so I kept it reasonably simple. Look, here’s a bed, a TV, a computer desk, and a closet. I tried to keep it in accordance to your Design Guidelines, but maybe I’ve missed something?
Designer: Well… [looks] First of all, do you really need a bedroom?
Resident: ?!
Designer: Many people don’t have a standalone bedroom, they just put the bed in one of the other rooms.
Resident: Well, as it stands, I like to sometimes keep the bedroom’s door closed when people are visiting, but it’s not like this is an issue—I can easily find my way there from anywhere in the apartment.
Designer: You could actually get rid of the TV.
Resident: Uh… as it stands I do watch TV, not often, but occasionally.
Designer: It’s extra clutter, and more electronics to take care of. You could just buy a bigger monitor and connect it to your computer.
Resident: Er… okay. Well, many people I know of have TVs in their rooms, but maybe it’s redunant in my case indeed.
Designer: And the computer desk can be merged with the closet.
Resident: What?!
Designer: Just make a shelf in the middle and put the computer on there, and keep your clothes and bedsheets in the compartments above and below.
Resident: [scratches head] Maybe…
Designer: You don’t need two doors, by the way. Scrap this one and reroute this other one to exit into your hallway.
Resident: Actually, that other door leads to the balcony, so I could breathe fresh air from that new garden.
Designer: Exiting from bedrooms directly to balconies is a bad paradigm, we discourage it. It confuses the residents—bedrooms are for sleeping.
Resident: But wait, all these people have balconies connected to their bedrooms… [lists a few big-name, well-respected residents]
Designer: Balconies will go away in the New and Improved house, to be replaced with slick smooth walls. We’ve talked to the guys in orange about this, and they agree with the change. They won’t be in the new edition of the Design Guidelines either.
Resident: [sigh]

At this point, a different designer starts talking about a mockup he has prepared for a new library room. Our resident, interested (she likes reading books), asks to see it. The mockup is on one half on the page, and shows one huge shelf stretched across the entire wall, with all the books on it. The other half has text about how having multiple shelves apparently interferes with the new planned “teleport around the house in two foot taps” feature. The design of yours shows that only a small portion of this new ubershelf is going to be shown at a time, and the user will have to press a button to make the slit slide and stop over books they want.

Resident: Why not just use multiple shelves like every other library out there? I use your current design exactly because it’s a traditional library with none of those newfangled ‘chromey’ features that all the libraries are adopting now.
Designer: Our research indicates that the frames of the shelves take valuable space that people would prefer to use for books.
Resident: I guess I’ll have to stick with my old library, then, or ask someone else to renovate it.

At this point, designer #2 turns around to show text written on the back of his blue shirt: “The construction industry is just a bunch of idiots hating each other”.

Resident: Erm… I realize it’s a joke, but that’s because I’ve grown thick enough skin over the years around you to let it pass. But imagine if someone completely new comes here and sees this—is it the impression we want to be promoting? Many neighbors give us weird looks as it is.
Designer: Well, that text is true.

Frustrated, the resident turns away and leaves, deciding to make her room over however she sees fit, and just let her guests judge.

The moral of this parable is left as an exercise to the reader.