I think that our job as software developers is to help people find what they are looking for.

I see myself as a cartographer as I help people navigate the massive amount of data that is around them and I try to let them see what is important and to hide what is just noise.

Our business is a complicated one, there are three big dangers we face every time we design an interface:

  • we hide some important data: the data that the person is looking for is not close to the hand
  • we misplace some data: the data that the person is looking for is not in the right place
  • we create noise: we pack an interface with a lot of data that is not needed

Each of these threats will result in a poor experience for the person who is going to use our map, it will create frustration and, in time, will result in a bad reputation for us.

This is the danger we run every day but I think it also makes our job so interesting.