^{Note: this blog was transcribed from a voice note as I rambled about my experience. If you want to know how I talk as I reflect, this is a pretty good indicator of my thought processes.}

Metal in my mouth

I was at the dentist. I was sitting there, the appointment had just started, and they're going back and forth between checking my teeth and then typing stuff into the computer. My first thought, I suppose due to everything going on in the world of technology and always wanting to improve things, was: oh, can I make this more efficient? What if, instead, they could just talk out loud as they checked my teeth, and rather than having to take a break every single time to go between checking my teeth and then typing on the computer, they could just say what they were seeing. A program autofills the information where it needs to go, and now the procedure is even faster.

Almost immediately after that, I realized: wait, I really like that break. That's important for my teeth to rest. After all, sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I feel like if I got my teeth poked nonstop with no break, going through my whole mouth at once, that would be uncomfortable.

That got me thinking.

Maybe the fact that they need to switch between checking my teeth and typing it in the computer is actually a really important part of the process.

The cost of the optimization

Now I'm thinking about how we really need to think about the processes that we're optimizing, especially as humans are involved in them. Obviously, there's a lot of processes that can just be optimized and should be. But when it comes to ones with people involved, it got me thinking a lot about the user experience. While we could make it more efficient, it could make it a lot more uncomfortable for the people involved.

I had this opinion as the one getting my teeeth poked, but for all I know, the dentists themselves also really value that break. It allows them to do a different movement with their hand and not just poke my teeth over and over again. Maybe it's a core part of resting their hand and not having strain from continuous repeated motions?

I think it really is important to think about who's involved and the cost of the optimization. Go over what it would look like if you did optimize it, find the assumptions and implicit knowledge that is within the process, and you may learn that you shouldn't be optimizing it.

I have a feeling that there are many processes like this in which we could very easily think, "oh, let's speed that up", and after speeding it up, realize that we lost a core component and the act of slowing down in the process was actually really important to it.

Tying in to software requirements

It's honestly not even just optimization. I don't want to go too deep for this specific reflection, because I think the concept of slowing down deserves its own post. But I also want to think about how it relates to requirements. In doing software requirements well, you need to really understand what you're doing, talk to all the stakeholders involved, know what matters, what the pain points are, and also find the implicit information within the domain.

If you just asked about the process of doing a dental checkup, you would learn that they go between checking your teeth and then typing things in. Without putting yourself in the shoes of the people doing it, you might not realize that they need a break.

But having that rest is good.

The changing of working on the teeth to the computer is good. It's useful.

It's not just there because of a lack of technology — sure, that's part of it, but for all I know that isn't the full story. It also has a really important part in the overall process, to let the patient rest and not feel that pain consistently, while also giving the dentist a break.

Optimizing alongside innovation

On that note, I want to end this reflection with a thought about optimization and whether something doesn't exist because it isn't needed versus it was never possible until recently.

In this case, I recognize that AI tools to make a dentist visit more efficient didn't exist until recently. So the fact that my teeth got a break from the poking is almost certainly due to them having no way to be more efficient. That said, I think we should always approach new scenarios with a fresh mind. Taking the previous state of the scenario into account is important, but a forward-facing mindset is what helps us use all available technologies to innovate while keeping people's needs and requirements at the forefront.