What I’ve noticed so far after shifting to the AI industry.
■SIMILARITY
・Reading between the Lines
The process of giving value to the client is almost identical. In both industries, we first listen to the client’s needs, then we give them our proposal and revise the proposal as we communicate.
In both industries, the most important part is to understand the client’s ACTUAL needs. TO READ BETWEEN THE LINES. There is often a gap between their needs and what the clients think they need. We need to guide them to think about WHY they are thinking that way. For me, even though I’m aware about that gap, it’s still hard to prevent that. I guess I need to try and fail more.
・Meaning of the Industry
Another similarity is that Technology and Architecture are both JUST ALTERNATIVE METHODS TO SOLVE OTHER PEOPLE’S PROBLEMS.
During college, as an architecture student, we were constantly asked to provide a solution to help solve problems. So, we first researched about the area of the project, then presented our proposal using whatever type of architecture to solve what we thought was a problem. We did that cycle 2~4 times a year.
So even though I don’t have a computer science degree, I truly feel that the skills I was able to obtain such as, presentation skills / Problem-Solving Skills etc, will help me help others in the near future with, which now has turned to, AI technology.
■DIFFERENCES
・Work Styles
I couldn’t work freely like how I’m doing right now. When I was working in the architecture industry, I had to go to the office every day even during the pandemic. The main reasons were..
| Architectural Drawings | Don’t have Huge copy machine at home |
| Using REAL Materials | Both me and the client wanted to see the actual material. Maybe some device that can show a material’s texture at a kindle-level quality might show up someday. |
| Tech Infrastructure | Didn’t have the environment to do the entire work at home. Well.. this might have been a problem that was company-specific. |
| Difficulty of Imagining Spaciousness | It’s far easier to explain if the client were in the same place. Right now IKEA has an app using augmented reality to show how the furniture is going to be like if it were to be placed at your home. SO COOL! |
・Researching
First of all, you can’t GOOGLE SEARCH the answer most of the time.
If you don’t know whether the detail plan you thought up with is actually constructable, you might have to call the carpenter or the manufacturer and have them see it (Most of the time they will break your heart by telling you how horrible your detail plan is).
If you’re trying to make the ceiling higher but you don’t know whether you have enough ventilation duct space between the ceiling and the upper level’s floor, you’ll have to ask a vender.
What I’m trying to say here is that most of the time, you can’t do the research on your own, and for me that REALLY SUCKED.
・Mindset
Aging maybe one of the reasons but I tend to see many people distancing themselves from technology. They’ve been working for so long in their own ways it’s hard for them to shift. I think that this is also the reason why an architecture version of STACKOVERFLOW doesn’t exist. The people who has the knowledge doesn’t have the platform nor the skills to USE that platform to share their expertise. Some people don’t even have a smart phone and uses FAX instead.
I also feel that the architecture industry doesn’t have a GIVER (Term used in “GIVE AND TAKE” by Adam Grant) culture like the tech industry. So that GIVING culture was quite new to me.
■MY THOUGHTS
I’m sure sooner or later AI will start disrupting the architecture industry like all the others.
Maybe one day, I can be a part of that.
