There is a sea change taking place right now. People are becoming more aware of the poorly made electronic gadgets around them and realizing they can choose something better. This is a great shift in a new direction, making people stop blaming themselves and start rising up against the real problem. However, there is a long road ahead as people shift from the old way of thinking.
A shining example is an article that was recently published in The Guardian titled “My new mobile is lumbered with a bewildering array of unnecessary features aimed at idiots“. The protagonist launches into an array of annoying qualities about his phone that render it nearly unusable. In the event that he does manage to squeeze out a phone call, the process of fighting his way there leaves him flustered and angered. This experience has affected him so much that it has changed the way he looks at phones, and he is spreading the word.
This is a huge step forward from the days where someone would be confused by a horribly designed device and chalk it up to themselves being too stupid to understand it. This particular scenario happens regularly with elders and computers when they hear about all that can be done with a computer. Because they’ve never had a good experience to compare to, the arcane methods used to navigate these little boxes appear overwhelmingly daunting and complex. When it comes down to it, there is a very good reason that elders typically feel this way.
Computers are overwhelmingly daunting and complex.
Not without good reason, mind you. The amount that these little boxes can accomplish is quite impressive, and with a great amount of options comes an equal or greater amount of methods to use those options. These options, in modern day parlance, have come to be known as “features”. It becomes easy to forget that the more features a device has, the more difficult it is to operate. This is why it takes multiple people with years of training to operate the dizzying array of knobs, switches, levers, and dials on a Boeing 747.
Historically, the more features a device had, the more expensive it was to produce. This kept a check on how complex devices became, as soon people wouldn’t pay more for the features they didn’t want. People developed a shorthand of using “feature lists” to demarcate which devices were better than others, and advertisers jumped at this opportunity to quickly and easily have something in writing that made their product stand out. This worked well for everyone involved.
Then along came software. With this advent, the cost to add in things that would qualify as “features” reduced dramatically, as they only had to be created once, and could be freely duplicated. Suddenly we have email with tailored ads, phones you can watch movies on, and video games on everything with a screen. If it adds a bullet to the feature list, throw it in. Because this used to be the most efficient way to determine the best product, people instinctively pick the product with “more stuff” in it over the one that might actually accomplish what they want done.
As a real-life example, a calculator manufacturer recently had two models for sale with the exact same functionality; the only real difference was the model number. Yet one of these calculators was selling much more than the other. Curious, the company hired a research agency to find out why. The agency went into stores where the calculators were sold side by side, and watched people compare feature lists, try out the calculators, and repeatedly pick one over the other. Then they went up to the customer and asked why they chose the one they did. Many of the customers had no idea, some said they just went with intuition, and some explained their process.
After reading the boxes and trying them out, they held one calculator in each hand and comparatively weighed them. They picked the heavier one, because it must have “more stuff” inside.
This method of thinking worked well for centuries, but is painfully out of date today. The mentality that you are missing out by not cramming every possible feature into something you pay for is self-defeating. People forget that for every feature you add, there needs to be a way to access it. Quickly you have gadgets with screen after screen of options, and suddenly you can’t get past the kitchen timer and movie player just to place a call.
A few companies have been producing focused products that accomplish the best tasks for their job, making it a point to leave out features that only get in the way. However, people still using the old way of thinking hold this against them. People dislike the iPod with the reasoning that it doesn’t have an FM tuner. People scoff at the Wii because it doesn’t have a DVD player. They think that if every imaginable feature isn’t squeezed into a gadget, it is less desirable. On the contrary, every feature you add crams more into the same little space. Soon when you want to sit down, relax, and just listen to your music or play a game, you have to fight through all the stuff you thought you wanted. It is far better to have a simple, direct interface that will immediately do what you want almost before you ask. It doesn’t do everything, but what it does, it does well.
The article that I mentioned at the beginning touches on this, but still comes from the old way of thinking. The title of the article focuses on the features that are on the phone, and how horrible they are. As he launches into the article, his complaints focus not on the features, but how unusable the device has become because there are so many loaded on. I haven’t seen a simple, small phone without buttons on every side in years. I regularly hear people complain about this, so the market is obviously there, but not loud enough to drive things yet.
It’s easy to drive the products with feature glut into extinction. Buy the things that do what you want, not the ones that promise to do everything. They already have to give away the phone in the article. Let’s make sure they don’t get made at all.
