You've stumbled upon the blog of Paul Malan. I love my family, I love to write, I love to ride my bikes, and I love to take pictures. Maybe someday I'll think of something clever or arresting to say right here.Yesterday I posted a book review for Designing the Obvious: A common sense guide to web development. The book was a fantastic read given my professional background, but I mentioned that it didn’t have much to offer the rest of you.
Having re-read a section of the book, I now think my claim of irrelevance was incorrect. In fact there is an idea in the book just waiting to be exposed to the great religious debate that so attracts my attention and distracts my thoughts.
Trying to relate web development strategy to religious beliefs may seem a bit of a stretch, but I’ll try to connect the two and see if it makes as much sense to you as it does to me.
For developers there are two ways to expose a process to a user. We can create a process that matches a user’s mental model (the way they think about the task) or we can create a process that matches the computer’s implementation model (the way the computer actually carries out a request.) The former is obviously the better option because it allows a user to accomplish their goal without having to understand what the computer actually does.
The distinction might be clarified by considering the task of deleting files from a computer. These days we know that we can delete a file by selecting a file icon and dragging it to a trash can icon, a process that matches our mental model of the task because it visually re-creates the process of throwing trash into the bin under our desk. But some of us remember the days of deleting files from DOS- or older UNIX-based computers—far less intuitive, with abbreviated commands and options that matched the computer’s implementation model, not the user’s mental model.
It is this distinction between implementation models and mental models that creates the opportunity to apply web development to religion. This excerpt from Designing the Obvious should make the connection:
“A mental model, in other words, is what we believe to be true, generally based upon our experiences, and how we assimilate new things into our existing knowledge. It doesn’t have to be the truth, and it usually isn’t. It just has to settle in our heads well enough to let us sleep at night. It has to help us understand how to use a computer and understand what it is, but not necessarily what it really does.
“For users to feel good about an application, they need to feel as if they understand it. Making it as simple as possible to understand—even if that understanding is completely inaccurate—is designing the obvious. Of course, the inaccurate understanding has to be useful as a way of thinking and simplifying, but as long as that’s true, the design has a better chance of succeeding.
“In other words, it’s OK if the user is completely wrong in her perception of what is happening as long as her sense of understanding makes her feel good and competent, and she can accomplish her goals with her understanding, regardless of how faulty it might be.”
I can easily see how similar logic might apply to religion in general and to the LDS Church specifically, but I’m not sure which of several potential applications makes the most sense.
Just like a web application, religion seems to work best when it is obvious. A successful religion would be one that obfuscates the confusing details and simply allows adherents to meet their spiritual goals. It would allow members to believe they understand how to use God and understand what God is, but not necessarily what God really does. In short, a successful religion ought to match our mental model about God, it ought to be simple, and it ought to let us avoid exposure to things that unnecessarily confuse us.
Unfortunately religion sits on a slippery slope and can’t seem to resist trying to define and explain each of life’s mysteries. Just as tribal folklore told us how the zebra got its stripes, religion seeks to explain the origin of our species and nature of our maker. Some go even further, explaining different languages and skin color, dabbling in extra-terrestrial phenomena, and defining eternal relationships that resemble multi-level-marketing schemes. None of these efforts disprove a religion, to be sure, but they certainly keep us from labeling them “obvious.”
The Pareto principle, commonly known as the 80-20 rule, suggests that 80 percent of the consequences result from 20 percent of the causes. In terms of web development, it means that 80 percent of an application’s usefulness will be derived from just 20 percent of its features. Accepting this approximation means developers should list every potential feature and then identify and create the 20 percent will satisfy 80 percent of user needs, leaving the balance for future iterations of the project. In theory, this reduction leads to an obvious, and successful, application.
I don’t believe religion is exempt from the Pareto principle. Religion has historically sought to answer all of life’s unanswerable questions, and new religions therefore have an enormous list of potential “features” to include. Since I know very little about my own faith but even less about any other, I have to use the LDS Church as an example.
If the principles from Designing the Obvious can be applied to religion, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young ought to have taken a vastly different approach when they set the LDS Church on its course. Had they done so no one would wonder if Mormons really believe Adam to be the God of this world, no one would ask if polygamous marriage in the next life is the key to salvation, and none of us would know what it means to hie to Kolob.
The inclusion of these 80-percent doctrines certainly doesn’t mean the LDS Church isn’t true, it simply means that from a perspective of usability it is extremely cumbersome. Perhaps recognizing this, Church leaders seem to have expended great effort to sanitize past teachings—to identify and emphasize the 20 percent of the religion that will satisfy 80 percent of the members’ needs.
Would religion be better if it promoted a simpler understanding, even if the understanding were ultimately incorrect? Or is religion necessarily too complex to benefit from an obvious design? If an attempt were made to simplify the LDS belief system to include only the core 20 percent, which “features” do you think would make the cut? Perhaps the Pareto principle is already being applied at an individual level—perhaps so many of my peers have accepted what I struggle with simply because they have pruned their belief system to ignore the 80 percent they don’t need to meet their goals, while I still seek to use 100 percent of the doctrine.
I know it’s been a while since we talked religion, but let me know what you think about these ideas. I’m trying to overcome my expectation of perfection in my writing, so I’m forcing myself not to edit this too heavily. Accordingly it may not be as clear as I’d like, but I think it should be sufficient to start a conversation.
I am not a computer person--in fact, without these obvious designs you are studying, I would probably not even use a computer. I am happy to have all my needs met with a click and no additional thought on my part. But I wonder, are you?? When you see a new feature on someone else's program, do you just accept that it does what you want it to do, or do you want to know how it is actually doing it?
I would say there are those who are happy to have their religious needs met with a "click" and then there are those who want to know the actual reality behind the doctrines.
The difference between using obvious design for computers and using it for religion is, when a computer programmer offers me a program full of things I do not understand but easy for me to use nonetheless, he does not deny the fact that the program is in fact designed in a way to hide the real application behind the feel good click. There are no claims of being the One True Computer Program or threats of damnation for using a different program. People do not get slaughtered in the name of a computer design.