Aerodynamic Sheen

 

 

This post is in place of another blog post I have since deleted since I feel like it wasn't the type of personal content I really wanted to have posted publicly.

Something worth thinking about is how the aesthetic of someone reflects who they are. Who they associate with and what they identify with. You find this in the extraneous trappings of someone, beyond just the basic utility (if they are super normcore that speaks enough as well)  its the tiny details they add to their personal effects that communicates a certain aspect of themselves, but also sometimes its all just such droll glossy effects that don't actually show the type of person they really are. 

I remember this one story of this engineer who used to design racecars in Indiana. They were talking to me about how other engineers were designing their racecars and spending thousands of dollars on complex engine designs and other expensive pieces of hardware getting hardly any advantage over their opponents because everyone was already hyper optimized in every aspect. 

One team suddenly started always winning races and the other teams wanted to figure out what engines they were using, the tires, the big details but it seemed actually they were a little subpar or average in a lot of these aspects but they kept outperforming everyone nonetheless. Someone noticed a tiny rather blatantly obvious detail after one race which is that the car was a lot of more shiny than the others. 

It turns out this team was adding an extra layer of sheen to make the car look more appealing and flashy, but also it had the added effect that the sheen they were using was actually making the car more aerodynamic as well. Since no other cars were doing this and were merely focusing on the technical aspects they weren't getting this minor advantage but already they were all hyper optimizing against each other in all other aspects, so this tiny added advantage equated to them beating all the other teams.

There's lots of allegories to draw from this story but sometimes its just the little added sheen, that tiny added extra detail that isn't found anywhere else that makes the unique qualities truly pop out. Whether this is designing a product or just presenting yourself, aesthetics can matter in a deep way that might not seem obvious on the surface. In hindsight however it might seem kind of obvious why one tiny aspect might account for a large tipping point for the whole gestalt of something.