The Pixel Pusher
I push pixels. You do it long enough and you eventually get good at it. Don’t tell that to my self deprecation though. The real work is problem solving. Taking a square peg and fitting it into a round hole so it appears that it always belonged there. You can’t imagine it not fitting there. That’s the rub. That’s design. An elegant solution for other people’s problems.
And the other people? They’re experts. All of them. They tell you everything about their field. You learn about horse racing, health insurance, trash collecting, trust funds, global markets, art auctions, donuts, gasoline and many other things you thought you’d never learn about. Then I ask questions. Lots of questions. And when I’m done asking questions their problem becomes our problem and I can get to working on it. I stand when I work. Hemingway stood when he worked by the way. That’s where our similarities end. Anyway, I stand and click and click until I create something I don’t hate. It’s completely wrong but that’s the point. You have to start somewhere. Eventually, with thousands and thousands of mouse clicks and more and more feedback it becomes less and less wrong, until our square peg slides smoothly into the round hole and connects data from dozens of systems into one human friendly interface.
It’s essentially me pushing pixels with the click, click of a mouse while I listen to Spotify and drink mineral water. More importantly it’s me listening to people and asking the right questions, then deciding whether I round the edges of the peg or square the edges of the hole.