welcome back to the american product institute.
last week, we returned a bit rusty and wrote about it. this week, among other things, we’ve reorganized our bookshelves so astutely it would make melvil dewey blush. and we’ve been reading from a few of them, too. just a few doors down from the permanent collection of the datavisual gallery is our library.
today, we rip some wisdom from the pages of one of our books.
the paradox of technology
after you read the design of everyday things you see doorknobs in a whole new light. and stovetops. and jet airliners. and thermostats and teapots and refrigerators. and every other technology that has faded into the background of the everyday.
don norman’s opus on design principles and the uncanny coffepot for masochists on its cover can be found in every product design library compiled since the book’s original publication in 1988.
it’s in our library too.
as we highlight the books on our meticulously organized shelves throughout 2022 and beyond, we won’t bother writing up a full synoposes. the skeleton isn’t the body, nor is it the soul. and there are a plenty of skeletons at your fingertips.
no - instead of dissecting a book, we’ll take it off the shelf, tastefully pluck one choice morsel of inspiration from it’s pages, and chew on it. a few block quotes peppered with some commentary and a strong recommendation to buy it. from bookshop.org or a brick & mortar of the mom & pop variety. buy it and then read it for yourself. or just put it on your bookshelf for later. a book is never a bad purchase.
so which morsels from the godfather of ux to highlight here? he has many. we’ll go with the paradox of technology. it’s on page 33 of the revised and expanded edition:
The same technology that simplifies life by providing more functions in each device also complicates life by making the device harder to learn, harder to use. This is the paradox of technology and the challenge for the designer.
added functionality adds complexity. as an example, norman asks the reader to consider the wristwatch:
A few decades ago, watches were simple. All you had to do was set the time and keep the watch wound. The standard control was the stem: a knob at the side of the watch. Turning the knob would wind the spring that provided power to the watch movement. Pulling out the knob and turning it rotated the hands. The operations were easy to learn and easy to do. There was a reasonable relationship between the turning of the knob and the resulting turning of the hands.
he goes on to detail with delightful specificity the ways in which the simple wristwatch, once just a dial intuitively controlled by a well-mapped knob, has evolved into a comparative supercomputer of forms and functions and features and modes and buttons and screens.
In the modern digital watch, instead of winding the spring, we change the battery, or in the case of a solar-powered watch, ensure that it gets its weekly dose of light. The technology has allowed more functions: the watch can give the day of the week, the month, and the year; it can act as a stopwatch (which itself has several functions), a countdown timer, and an alarm clock (or two); it has the ability to show the time for different time zones; it can act as a counter and even as a calculator.
we can thank casio for all that. and as much as we love a g-shock at the american product institute, they certainly prove more challenging than a timex easy reader when daylight savings rolls around. norman describes the feature bloat of the wristwatch in vivid detail, building to a crescendo as he foretells of the apple watch, which would drop a few years after he revised and expanded the book.
The watch is no longer just an instrument for telling time: it has become a platform for enhancing multiple activities and lifestyles.
added functionality adds complexity. so what to do?
There are no easy answers. Many people have solved the problem by not using a watch. They use their phone instead. A cell phone performs all the functions much better than the tiny watch, while also displaying the time.
this solution is unsatisfying.
a cell phone certainly displays the time just as good as a casio but it also displays bunches of notifications you don’t really need to see right now and brings with it the magnetic pull of the infinite depths within.
and i just wanted to know the time.
his forward-looking, techno-utopian solutions aren’t so satisfying, either:
Now imagine a future where instead of the phone replacing the watch, the two will merge, perhaps worn on the wrist, perhaps on the head like glasses, complete with display screen. The phone, watch, and components of a computer will all form one unit. We will have flexible displays that show only a tiny amount of information in their normal state, but that can unroll to considerable size. Projectors will be so small and light that they can be built into watches or phones (or perhaps rings and other jewelry), projecting their images onto any convenient surface. Or perhaps our devices won’t have displays, but will quietly whisper the results into our ears, or simply use whatever display happens to be available: the display in the seatback of cars or airplanes, hotel room televisions, whatever is nearby.
i really just wanted to know what time it is. why is a robot whispering in my ear?
why didn’t i just wear a watch?
norman argues that it isn’t the complexity that’s the problem, but the confusion. and that the job of a designer is to make the complex simple. here, he is spot on. the perpetual engine of progress lurches ever forward, leaving new layers of complexity in its wake. it is up to those who design new technology to ensure the wave doesn’t swallow us all. a complex watch need not be confusing, if it is well designed. the same is true for any other everyday thing.
in this way, technology is not a paradox after all. because it has a solution: good design by good people.
this is some techno-utopianism we can get behind.
but there is a second answer to the paradox, as well.
bad design exists, which means that not every new version is better than the last. while some engines seek perpetual growth, progress, and newness, some engines seek simply perfection. unwritten on the pages of the excellent everyday things is that some design, like the simple wristwatch, is timeless.
casio is the official digital watch of the american product institute. rolex is the official analog.
cover art by vincent van gogh - still life with coffee pot, dishes and fruit - 1888 - public domain
