In Praise of Intangibles

Last week I traveled to a work-related conference to present on an informal evaluation of software that we UW Medicine computer people did in partnership with users. The specifics aren't important to this blog, but I'll summarize the salient point: users didn't care about number of widgets, they liked the most user-friendly software. That might seem obvious, but ease of use is often lost in evaluations. There's a reason for that. As Jonah Lehrer writes, humans "become fixated on quantifiable variables like horsepower (they're so easy to compare)" which results in us making silly decisions, based on relatively unimportant but tangible measurements.

Life in South Lake Union is full of tangibles. The square feet in our fairly small apartment. The number of commuter vehicles that cover major streets at rush hour. The amount of money needed to keep the community center running. The housing and job target numbers assigned by the city and regional planning organizations. The test scores at available public or private schools. But as Eric Liu points out in his TEDxRainier talk "Seattle's Civic Secret Sauce," it's the intangibles that make Seattle (and South Lake Union) a great place to live. We all share the same space, like one big public library as he puts it. Even in bad economic times, we willingly vote for things that don't directly benefit most of us, like a low-income housing levy. Instead of a zero-sum scramble, Seattleites build multi-ethnic coalitions.

It's hard to focus on the intangibles, which is kinda the point of living in community. Geographic proximity to integrate our everyday lives. Regular community practices to remind one another what's important. And connecting ourselves and our resources to the people of the neighborhood because we're all in it together.