Working out of the Box is a series of features presenting architects who have applied their architecture backgrounds to alternative career paths.

In this installment, we're talking with Matt Storus, who is Head of Design for 21.co, a leading Bitcoin startup. Simply put, 21.co is a token-based social network, where one earns digital currency by replying to e-mails and completing tasks like surveys. There, Storus guides the design process from the conceptualization of new features to the final product. We spoke with the designer and former architect about leaving the profession. Our conversation also dives into blockchain—what is it and how could it be used in the field of architecture.

Where did you study architecture?

I got my Bachelors of Architecture at the University of Waterloo and my M.Arch at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

At what point in your life did you decide to pursue architecture?

I think my origin story is relatively commonplace for many architects. As a kid, I had a natural affinity for both creative pursuits (building, drawing, writing) and academic pursuits (math, science, technology). As a teen in the early 00s, I taught myself photoshop and dabbled in web design. From there, I went on to pursue an undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Waterloo, then onto my masters at GSD.

When did you decide to stop pursuing architecture? Why?

People’s experience of the world was being modulated by their interaction with technology, and I felt like the discipline was blind to it.

I started at the GSD almost exactly when the first iPhone was released. At the time, parametric design and digital fabrication dominated the academic discourse. With a few exceptions, the discussion of emergent technology was exclusively focused on those applications, and of course I was happy to participate in it. However, towards the end of my time there I felt dissatisfied with what I saw as an insular focus within architecture. Increasingly people’s experience of the world was being modulated by their interaction with technology, and I felt like the discipline was blind to it. I had a fair amount of professional practice under my belt from both the co-op program at Waterloo and a couple years before and after the GSD. While I really enjoyed the craft of designing and building actual projects, it was simply not as exciting as the possibilities that designing for tech promised. So in 2012, with the help of a classmate who had similar ambitions I took a huge leap and became a User Experience (UX) Designer. I left Boston for Silicon Valley and joined Samsung Design where I eventually worked on apps, wearables, and IoT products.

Describe your current profession.

I am currently the Head of Design at 21.co. We are a social network that lets you earn digital currency (like Bitcoin) for doing micro-tasks like surveys. We think digital currency is going to change the way the world works. Rather than asking people to buy digital currency with a credit card or bank account, we make it easy to earn it instead. 

It’s my job to guide the design of our product in collaboration with our CEO and engineers. I help conceptualize new features or products, design and prototype them, gather feedback from users, then work with the engineering team to ship the “final” product. I put final in quotes because unlike architecture, digital products (like apps and websites) are never really complete. Instead we are constantly measuring performance, gathering feedback from customers, and redesigning our product to make their experience better.

First: wtf is a blockchain? “Blockchain” has become a mainstream buzzword overnight and it may be helpful to define exactly what it is before talking about its application in architecture specifically. A blockchain is a decentralized and open database. Typical databases are run by a single operator. For example, the database behind your Google Drive account is owned and operated by Google. By comparison, blockchain databases are not operated by a single person or company. They are operated by a decentralized yet coordinated group of participants all over the world. There is no “primary” copy of the database. Instead, a system of incentives ensures that many participants maintain coordinated copies of the same database. There is no single point of failure. Furthermore, blockchains are totally open. No one entity owns a blockchain, and anyone can interact with it without needing to ask permission. Strong cryptography and an incentive system ensure that the distributed database works even when you can’t trust all the operators in the network.

Blockchains are part of a broader technological trend that rejects centralized and private systems

As for the big picture, blockchains are part of a broader technological trend that rejects centralized and private systems where you have to trust that the operator is an honest actor. Instead, blockchains are decentralized and open systems that work without the need to trust anyone. Google famously had an internal slogan that read: “Don’t be evil.” Or in other words, they recognized that they had a great deal of centralized power, and compelled their employees not to abuse it. By contrast, blockchains are said to embody the ethos: “Can’t be evil.” The design of the system itself prevents bad actors from disrupting it.

When evaluating the potential application of blockchain to other industries, the main question to ask is: does the proposed solution really need a blockchain? No really. Does it? 90% of the time you see an idea that sprinkles “blockchain” into the description because it is a “sexy” buzzword. Big companies routinely use the word “blockchain” now if they want to make their investors excited, even when it has nothing to do with the actual technology. In most cases, the specific features of a blockchain (decentralized, open, trustless) aren’t really necessary and in most cases all you really need is a normal, modern, easy-to-use database. That being said: there are a few commonly-cited examples of using blockchain in the architecture/construction/real estate world. Many of these are quite speculative, and its unclear if the specific properties of a blockchain are really necessary.

You can then cut out all the middlemen and make this public data truly public, free and easy to access

One is property ownership. Transferring property ownership titles is labyrinthine; it is an inefficient and costly process. Property ownership records are maintained in various databases, in various governmental jurisdictions, in a variety of formats, and requiring you to pay a lot of middlemen to access what should be public data. The solution here would be to replace all of the disconnected and semi-private systems with a single open, secure, publicly-accessible blockchain database. You can then cut out all the middlemen (brokers, government, title companies, etc) and make this public data truly public, free, and easy to access. In some jurisdictions, governmental fraud is rampant. A blockchain-based solution would make the data publicly accessible and remove the possibility that an authority figure demands a bribe, for example. Blockchain could also easily prevent fraud, such as fake rental scams where people post real-looking rentals on craigslist and take deposits without actually owning the rental property. Also, a blockchain-based system would make it trivial to verify that someone owns the property they are advertising.

Another potential is smart contacts for professional services. Often, it can be a struggle to get paid by clients, even after completing work. The same problem exists for your GC or subcontractors. The alternative would be to use Smart Contracts to automatically pay you when a certain deliverable is complete. Smart Contracts are based on the Ethereum blockchain and they "auto-pay" to specific people when a specific measurable criteria is met. A generic example would be to automatically pay the architect when an updated construction document PDF is received at a specific email address. There are other supply-chain specific examples, such as: automatically pay a supplier when the GPS-tracked shipment of building elements arrives on site. These are potentially interesting applications of blockchains and smart contracts, because they can ensure the smooth execution of payments in a potentially adversarial environment.

Smart Contracts could also be used for the Internet of Things and Smart Buildings. In the future, every part of a building will be "smart" and contain some kind of sensor or computational ability. However, they all exist in "walled gardens" where manufacturers restrict access to their own costumers. Smart Contracts could create a marketplace between IOT devices that allows them to sell data and access between each other in an automated way. Smart thermometers, for example, could buy data from environmental sensors to improve their operation or a network of batteries could dynamically buy and sell electricity from one another depending on their needs.

I would be excited if more architects took an entrepreneurial approach to problems like this, rather than relegating exploration to “How can I make a cool building that *looks* kinda blockchain-y.”

There may certainly be many other applications of blockchain to architecture that simply haven't been explored. I would be excited if more architects took an entrepreneurial approach to problems like this, rather than relegating exploration to “How can I make a cool building that *looks* kinda blockchain-y.” Its kind of amazing that the 3 largest startups in the US (with a combined market cap of $100b) are based on design briefs that Architects and Urban Designers have worked on for decades—Uber, which re-imagined vehicle ownership; Airbnb, which re-imagined shared living space; and, WeWork, which re-imagined work spaces.

For all the talk of “radical experimentation” in academic Architecture and Urban Design, it has been very inward looking. The really transformative approaches to these common design-briefs are being realized by technologists with little-to-no understanding of the built environment, though I would credit companies like Airbnb for investing a lot into design.  I should also say that I know a number of architects who have moved into the world of tech, and they are doing a tremendous job translating their expertise and understanding. I am part of a group in San Francisco called Architechie, whose goal is to provide resources and a community for architects looking to move into the world of tech.

What skills did you gain from architecture school, or working in the architecture industry, that have contributed to your success in your current career?

I think that the practices of Architecture and UX Design are actually quite similar. Both disciplines attempt to orchestrate the experience of the people who interface with them. Successful projects in both fields manage to balance creativity and the realities of implementation. Furthermore, designers in both cases work with multidisciplinary teams (engineers, product owners, “users”) to bring a design into the world. To that effect, I think that architects are a natural fit for UX Design. From a tools perspective, there is also a fair degree of overlap. Most of the graphics software I use today is the same that I used in architecture, and I even get to bust out some 3D modelling and rendering on occasion. 

At the same time there are two major differences between the professions. The first has to do with process, while the second has to do with permanence. Both architecture and UX require a lot of “prototyping” in the process to iteratively arrive at a final design. Architectural prototyping, however, by necessity, puts a lot more abstraction between the designer and the final product. With the exception of construction mockups late in the process, it is practically impossible to experience a true-to-scale version of your design until it is actually built. You can simulate the experience with models, renderings, animations, and even virtual reality. However you must always operate at a certain level of abstraction. In a seemingly contradictory way, the design process for digital products is more tactile and requires less abstraction. When you prototype an app or a website, you can almost immediately interact with it at the correct scale and in the correct context. Even at an early stage, it's possible to put that design in front of dozens of real people to get their rapid feedback.

The second difference is the permanence and malleability of a project after it has been built. While buildings can and do change over time, they operate on a much longer timescale than digital products like apps. Any digital product that you use undergoes constant transformation with the goal of improving your experience or adapting to changes in the underlying technology. Combined with the relative speed and low cost at which a digital product can be built, it produces a totally different working style that is biased towards “moving fast and breaking things”, minimum viable products, etc.

Do you have an interest in returning to architecture?

I still keep up with architectural news through platforms like Archinect, and I think there will be a lot of opportunities for designers in tech and architecture to collaborate. An obvious one is the emergence of augmented reality as a potential new computing platform (after the desktop, laptop, and mobile phone). I think in a few years time we’ll look back and think it was bizarre that our only access to the internet was through a glowing rectangle we carried around in our pockets. 

There are a lot of interesting augmented reality products coming out of Magic Leap, Google, Microsoft, and now Apple with ARKit. We’re starting to see augmented reality become very mainstream with apps like Snapchat and even Pokemon Go. I think there is an interesting opportunity for architects to consider how the design of the built environment will adapt to this new interface. My friend and classmate Greg Tran explored this concept in his GSD thesis, and currently in his role as a Lead Designer at Magic Leap