The cursor spins a jagged, pixelated circle of white against a blue background that hasn’t changed its hue since 2001. I am sitting in a room where the air conditioning is set to a precise, bone-chilling 21 degrees, watching 11 colleagues pretend to be excited about a migration. We are moving from one HR management stack to another, a transition that has been described by the Chief People Officer as a leap into the future. But as the loading bar crawls to 41 percent and then stalls, a collective, silent groan vibrates through the laminate table. We all know the secret. We are trading a familiar purgatory for an unknown hell, and we weren’t the ones who chose the destination.
I remember trying to explain cryptocurrency to my cousin last winter, and it felt exactly like this. I was using words like ‘decentralized’ and ‘trustless,’ and he just wanted to know how to buy a sandwich. I failed to explain the tech because I forgot the human at the end of the transaction. Enterprise software developers do this every single day. They focus on the ‘robustness’ of the backend while the frontend remains a sprawling, unintuitive landscape of gray buttons.
It is a world where the user’s sanity is treated as a rounding error, a minor friction point that can be smoothed over with a 121-page PDF manual that no one will ever read.
The Master of Soil vs. The Cluttered System
Take Maria G.H., for example. Maria is a cemetery groundskeeper I met three years ago while I was researching digital tombstone registries-don’t ask why, it was a weird phase. Maria spends her days among the quietest neighbors you could imagine, but her digital life is a cacophony of errors. She has to use a specialized inventory system to track the 1101 plots under her care. The software was sold to the city council because it promised ‘unparalleled data integrity.’ In reality, it takes Maria 11 clicks to record a simple lawn-mowing event. The interface is so cluttered with administrative fields that she can barely see the map of the grounds she actually walks on. Maria G.H. is a master of the soil, a woman who knows the exact weight of a shovel-full of damp earth, yet she is made to feel like a fool by a software architect who has probably never stepped foot in a graveyard.
The Compliance Trap
This disconnect creates a permanent state of low-grade cognitive dissonance. We are told we are ‘knowledge workers’ and ‘value creators,’ but we are chained to interfaces that treat us like data-entry robots from 1991. The software doesn’t have to be good; it just has to be ‘compliant.’ It has to check the boxes for security, scalability, and integration. If it happens to make the user want to throw their monitor through a closed window, that doesn’t show up on the procurement report. The procurement officer sees a 51 percent cost-saving over five years; the employee sees 51 lost minutes of productivity every single day due to lag and nonsensical workflows.
[the architecture of the soul is found in the things that don’t need a manual]
We have reached a point where we value the system over the soul. It is the same reason why modern office chairs are designed by committees to be ‘ergonomically neutral’ but end up being universally uncomfortable. We have forgotten that tools are extensions of the human hand and mind. When a tool is poorly designed, it doesn’t just slow us down; it diminishes us. It tells us that our time is cheap and our frustration is irrelevant. It is an insult delivered in 10-point Calibri font.
The Antithesis of Disposable
I often think about the objects we choose for ourselves versus the ones chosen for us. When you buy a pen, you feel its weight. You test the flow of the ink. You want something that will last, something that feels like an ally in your work. This philosophy of longevity and personal resonance is why brands like maxwellscottbags exist. They understand that a person’s daily carry isn’t just a container; it’s a statement of respect for one’s own craft and time. It is the antithesis of the ‘disposable’ enterprise mindset where everything is a subscription and nothing is truly yours. In a world of fleeting, buggy interfaces, there is a profound dignity in an object that matures with you, one that was designed with the end-user’s lifelong satisfaction as the primary metric, not just a procurement officer’s checkbox.
Crafted Detail
Matures With You
True Ownership
But back in the 21st-floor conference room, the migration continues. The consultant, a man in a very expensive, very ill-fitting suit, tells us that the new system will ‘surface actionable insights.’ I raise my hand-a mistake, I know-and ask if the search bar actually works this time. He looks at me as if I’ve asked him to explain the inner workings of a blockchain (which, as established, I am terrible at). He says the search functionality is ‘federated across all modules.’ That’s consultant-speak for ‘No, but we’ve made the icon look like a magnifying glass.’
The Worst of Both Worlds
We are currently in a cycle where the ‘Consumerization of IT’ was supposed to save us. The idea was that work software should be as easy to use as social media. Instead, we got the worst of both worlds.
Requires Java Applet (Crashed 2011)
11 Different Notification Paths
The Way Out: Valuing Delight
Is there a way out? Perhaps not through the big players. The monopolies are too entrenched, the switching costs too high. The change has to come from a shift in what we value. We need to start treating ‘User Delight‘ not as a fluffy marketing term, but as a critical productivity metric. If an employee spends 21 minutes a day fighting a menu, that is a failure of the tool, not the person. We need to demand software that respects the 1 life we have to live. Maria G.H. shouldn’t have to spend her twilight years fighting a database; she should be tending to her gardens.
The Erosion Rate (Password Change Time)
41 Minutes Lost
I once spent 41 minutes trying to change my password on a government portal. By the time I succeeded, I had forgotten why I needed to log in. This is the ‘death by a thousand clicks.’ It is a slow erosion of the human spirit.
The True Luxury: An Interface That Disappears
We must stop accepting ‘good enough for the RFP’ as a standard for excellence. The tools we use define the quality of our days. If we surround ourselves with objects and systems that were built with care, we might find that we care a little more about the work we do. Whether it’s a piece of software or a leather briefcase, the intent behind the creation is always visible to the person using it.
Intent Is Visible
You can feel the ghost of the indifferent programmer in a laggy menu, just as you can feel the hand of the craftsman in a well-stitched seam.
