The monstrous face of bad design decisions?- the Vertu phone 2. Snapchat Spectacles 3. Juicero’s
Wi-Fi-enabled juicer 4. Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS - A Jawbone fitness band 6. Google Glass 7. Google’s
ARA modular phone 8. the Revolv smart hub
AND THE WINNER’S AREN’T...
History’s worst design decisions, Part I: Tech
The tech industry is an over-stuffed
graveyard of bad design decisions, and the
past year’s obituary list of lost devices is
long. The fire went out of 3DTV, Microsoft
gave up on the Windows Phone OS, and
even established names like Vertu closed
their doors. Bad luck, bad design or simple
functional failure?
If there’s one thing the history of tech has
shown us, it’s that there are no sure-fire bets.
The doubters who dismissed the iPhone
join the short-sighted sages who staked their
names on the failure of the car, the telephone
and the internet. Customers don’t always
take the superior path (witness Sony’s
struggles with Betamax), while brands don’t
always do the smart thing (Kodak ignored its
own patent for digital photography).
The smartphone market is particularly
merciless. Nokia’s Symbian was once the
dominant phone OS, but it was crushed by
the superior Android and iOS platforms.
BlackBerry clings on, despite ditching its
own OS and its once celebrated physical
keyboard (which it later brought back). Or
take the modular phone, which raced fromrendered concept to development in Google’s
own X division before evaporating in a cloud
of prevailing wisdom.
Tech analyst Gartner has an annual
report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies,
which tracks industry and consumer response
to impending ideas. Projects are launched
into our consciousness with what it calls the
‘innovation trigger’ before reaching the ‘Peak
of Inflated Expectations’. From here, the only
place to go is down, a vertiginous plunge into
‘the Trough of Disillusionment’. If a product
surfs this graph all the way to market without
jettisoning investor and consumer interest,
it makes it to the ‘Plateau of Productivity’,
a happy place of steady growth and reward.
Anticipation stokes desire, helped by
slick design. Crowd-funding is the easy
additive for silicon snake oil, with countless
‘smart’ devices promising a new world of
connectivity. The result? Kick-startedcatastrophes such as Juicero’s infamous
Wi-Fi-enabled smoothie machine ($400 to
scrunch up a packet of mixed fruit and veg).
Other big names took a hit. Jawbone failed to
make a go of its admittedly elegant fitness
bands, while Snapchat’s chunky smart
Spectacles didn’t flood the world with snappy
first-person films. Short-lived eco-systems
withered and died; Revolv’s ‘smart hub’ was
bought and shuttered by rival Nest, and
Logitech will soon kill its Link device. (Of
course, sometimes the ill-conceived get
second chances. Google Glass looked like a
failure, but lives on in specialist industry
applications. And despite the limitations of
the first Apple Watch, the company has
pushed on, happy for a slow burn instead of
overnight success.)
Failure is embedded in technological
development, and design is often an attempt
to mask an ill-considered idea. Nevertheless,
ambitious adventurers in venture capitalism
are seeking rewards that are too great to
ignore. As a result, the path to the fabled
‘Plateau of Productivity’ will forever be
strewn with dubious designs, and bad ideas. ∂1.2.3.7.4.8.5.3.7.6.170 ∑
W* Awards