Revisiting the Facade Pattern
The Facade Design Pattern provides an interface that simplifies access to a more complex (or in some cases poorly designed) API or subsystem. One of the motivations for use is to reduce the communication and dependencies between subsystems. Recently I was reflecting on how this pattern is frequently applied not only to software interfaces, but human interactions as well.
Visit the grocery store, stop by the bank, pass a colleague in the hall, answer a telemarketer’s call (thank heaven for caller ID), or just about anything that involves verbal communication, and the most common opening inquiry is, “How are you?”And without one iota of actual research I’m confident the most frequent response (at least in America) is, “Fine.” A completely meaningless and context-free response whose sole purpose is to simplify (and/or minimize) communication, and move it to the next state. (Can you imagine someone following that response with “Oh really, tell me more”?) It is, as I call it, the “Fine Facade Pattern”.
There’s nothing wrong with this pattern. It provides a solution to a commonly occurring problem of how to open the communication channel with another person, in a way that is safe, effective, and low cost. But perhaps there’s another way. Last year, over an early breakfast on the Microsoft campus, Julian, Miguel and I agreed to the following experiment: for the next seven days we would respond to the question, “How are you?” not with the Fine Facade Pattern, but with our intended state. Not necessarily how we were, but with how we wanted to be. So for the next week each of us sincerely replied, “Great!” and observed the results. The following week we met again and shared the following observations:
- People were often caught off guard (highly conditioned to the Fine Facade), but the majority actually gave a genuine smile after a short delay, seemingly brightened by the response
- Conversations tended to be more upbeat, focused on what was right, not wrong
- Our memories of our interactions evoked positive emotions as we shared our experiences
- A tiny sample seemed offended, as if we had no right to be so positive in the midst of their own dire emotional state
It’s not that we transformed into a trio of Pollyannas, viewing our actual circumstances outside the lens of any reality filter. And we recognized that overuse could diminish the effects and render it equivalent to the Fine Facade. But we liked the results (even those that were offended, as we knew who to take off our “eagles” lists). And we decided that if our facade was not going to represent the actual complexity of our subsystems, why should we always be only fine, when we could instead choose to be great?