---
title: Sometimes lipstick is exactly what a pig needs
weight: 2
tags:
 - platform
 - dx
---

{{% button href="https://youtu.be/VhloarnpxVo" style="warning" icon="video" %}}Watch talk on YouTube{{% /button %}}

By VMware (of all people) - kinda funny that they chose this title with the whole Broadcom fun.
The main topic of this talk is: What interface do we choose for what capability.

## Personas

* Experts: Kubernetes, DB engineer
* Users: Employees that just want to do stuff
* Platform engineers: Connect Users to Services by Experts

## Goal

* Create Interfaces: Connect Users to Services
* Problem: Many types of Interfaces (SaaS, GUI, CLI) with different capabilities

## Dimensions

> These are the dimensions of interface design proposed in the talk

* Autonomy: external dependency (low) <-> self-service (high)
  * low: Ticket system -> But sometimes good for getting an expert
  * high: Portal -> Nice, but sometimes we just need a human contact
* Contextual distance: stay in the same tool (low) <-> switch tools (high)
  * low: IDE plugin -> High potential friction if stuff goes wrong/complex (context switch needed)
  * high: Wiki or ticketing system
* Capability skill: anyone can do it (low) <-> Made for experts (high)
  * low: transparent sidecar (e.g. vulnerability scanner)
  * high: CLI
* Interface skill: anyone can do it (low) <-> needs specialized interface skills (high)
  * low: Documentation in web aka wiki-style
  * high: Code templates (a sample helm values.yaml or raw terraform provider)

## Recap

* You can use multiple interfaces for one capability
* APIs (proverbial pig) are the most important interface b/c it can provide the baseline for all other interfaces
* The beautification (lipstick) of the API through other interfaces makes users happy
