Origin
The phrase appears explicitly in the title the COMPUTER CHEATS (Operational Beauty), a work concerned with games, optimization, older forms of competence and the difference between efficiency and precision.
Competence and optimization
The principle does not equate beauty with maximizing a metric. One of its central tensions is that optimization can improve efficiency while erasing craft, friction, style or precision that made an older operation worth watching.
Public Luxury
Public Luxury asks what a well-made object or system gives the recipient. Operational Beauty asks whether the operation itself has grace.
BLUE HELL
In later BLUE HELL work, aesthetic care and competent execution increasingly converge: production logistics, interfaces, physical products and institutions are expected to function convincingly as well as look convincing.