Years ago I designed mobile phone software. At the time, phones were just beginning to be able to connect to the internet, so we had a web browser. Since the platform was a phone, it made sense to us to provide a way to automatically dial a phone number you found on a web page. That led to a discussion with the developers: what is a phone number and how do you recognize it?
It was not a new discussion. Before that, since phones even in those days stored lists of contacts, there was a form for entering a contact’s address. And thus: what is an address and how do you represent it?
It didn’t even start there. A contact might be a company, or it might be a person. A person probably (not necessarily, by the way) has a name. Thus: what is a name and how do you represent it?
Mobile phones have been able to keep track of time, both minute by minute and in larger increments measured by calendars. You guessed it: what is a date, how do calendars work, and aren’t they the same everywhere? (they are not)
Now this: what is a face and how do we recognize it?
Human experience is a lot wider and more varied than most people know. A group of developers implementing something — virtually anything — needs somebody who is not an implementer but a navigator. The navigator’s role is to discover (or just explain, if they already know) that surnames are not universally used, calendars are far more complex and varied than you might think, and for that matter, that there are “An estimated 100 million people… with facial differences.”
The real world is not black and white, and as was pointed out centuries ago: “There are more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
