Re: Product Development and Form/Function Paradigms

[zenda]

Introduction

I'm a musician and the main software company I buy from has brought out an update. People who want bugfixes have been amused and frustrated by the appearance of bells and whistles. One of my friends made a rolleyes-stylee joke, and was surprised by the response:

Originally Posted by Friend 2

"Samsung’s internet-enabled refrigerator, which is expected to go on sale in May for about $3,500, features a touchscreen interface to download recipes from Epicurious and to make posts on Twitter."
CES 2011: When Refrigerators Tweet and Washing Machines Text [Video] | TheBlogIsMine Dot Com

This triggered an image in my mind: Kitchen Alert Message: steak.meat cannot be transferred from My Refrigerator to My Oven ... it is already in use by dog.rxe

Well, that was so bloody funny that I laughed out loud - then choked on it as I invoked a variation on rule 34.
My 'joke' could, like Friend 1's be already in development.

Dear reader ... the next joke YOU generate at this moment ...

Yes, I mean go for it now ... imagine now some combination of object and functions which you'd consider unlikely. Now go forward 7 years and see it as a mandatory everyday object. How do you feel?

... yup. Same principle.

Let's move on to the Wi-Fi G-PRO-Stim-cam. It integrates with Twitter's KustomPulse app for up/downing user-programmed parameter tweaks, it is Youtube-S-Cure-enabled for private streaming; and it does not exist. Unlike OhMiBod Freestyle which does exist, is WiFi and integrates the rhythm of your music, whatever you want to play ... with ... whatever you want to play with.



Nowwwwwwww ..... if you'd rather get to your own responding first and you want guidelines, just go straight to 'To Conclude' at the bottom of this post, because on this side of your monitor, I'm champing at the bit. I just got to explore this and I feel a ramble coming on.


Decreasing Stability in Balance of Form and Function

Internet-Enabled Fridge. It's another possible creeping case of planning features over development or stability of main function ... whether function be a matter of 'What jobs can it do' or 'can it do its basic job for a long time'.

Can it do its job for a long time:
My mother's cooker is 55 years old and working perfectly without a service. A fridge freezer I gave and installed for her ... oh about 30 years ago is going strong, and it had been ten years old when I had got it. I had calmly expected that that should be so, and it was. 'Planned obsolescence' was a phrase which I learnt about thirty years ago, and I thought that meant that things which should last 50 years would be kind of sabotaged so they'd go wrong in 20.
I was well displeased.

What jobs can it do?
My first introduction to multifunctionality was the Swiss Army Knife. The second was my Atari 1040 STE computer. As the Cubase music program evolved, I kind of was OK about it coming to do more actual things, so that it's development was a balance between doing what it already did, either better or more stably, and it being able to do 'more things'. The reason was because that computer .. inside it .. Everything was possible. Data defining different functions ... programs, resource files, data files. Heck .... and a keyboard and mouse and monitor. Heck .. limited sources of input, and a black box which would change internal relationships to produce ..... a myriad of output.
I was overwhelmed.

New paradigms and technology for information
This dethingification has since spread into mobile devices and damn it. The Newtonian Model of the universe has been replaced in its effect on our consciousnesses by the Einsteinian and soon, the post - Einsteinian. With phones, for example, selling Things has been replaced by selling 'services' and 'solutions'.
I had lived either side of a cusp.


Then and Now

My historical background for 'having' things
"This is a tape recorder
"This is a guitar
"This is an Amplifier
"Here is something to put them in and wheel them about.

Progress meant I upgraded to:
"A better tape recorder ... which does more Tape-recordy things ... e.g. auto bias adjust to work dynamically with a given tape. It's still a tape recorder.
"A better Guitar ... The Fender Strat hack of balancing the three pole switch between poles to get out of phase is now replaced by the world shattering FIVE pole switch. It's still a guitar.

This Side of the Cusp: my present, and my hopes and fears for the future
I am trying to be 'Generous' or flexible in my thinking, however, I feel increasingly threatened and frightened by my being expected to pay for the building blocks and research which goes into BLOATWARE - whilst at the same time trying to acknowledge that my 'Arg that's bloatware' might be someone elses 'Oooh at last it does This'.

I am a hobby photographer who does not listen to music for pleasure, so I gritted my teeth when finding I could not buy a mobile phone without forking out for irrelevancies. My choice had been taken away, and some of my 'paying power' had been vampired away from my next specific audio or photo purchase. NERO cd and dvd burner is a software example of this worst case scenario. And in private conversation about the music software, I have been known to scream, whilst regurgitating beer and pizza, "Loopmash? LOOPMASHHHHH? What's LOOPMASH got to do with my Precious Music and basic studio functions??" into my Skype connection, whilst crouching and crimacing like that little fecker in LOTR.

I DO want to honour people's right to have 'suites' and 'portals' if they want them. However, I do not want MY ability to choose components to be taken away from me. "You don't have to use the bits you don't want to use" does not answer my concern, because I only want to pay for what I am going to use. If I HAVE to pay for 'this' ... my 'power' to afford to buy 'that' is injured.

I accept that there is a negotiable threshold. I always thought that 'Loudness' buttons on hi fi were 'silly', but I had no strong objections, because I was paying for 'choice of modifications within relevant context' ... whereas I'd be horrified if I found I had to pay for a function like 'upload today's sequence of played tunes to your Facebook profile as a song list' choice. I'd be as horrified as I felt when I realised I could not get a phone without paying for an unwanted camera and mp3 player.


To conclude:

More and more things are able to do ... more and more things.

How do You feel? What do you think about the increase in multifunctionality?

You hate it or reckon it detracts? How?
You love it or reckon it enhances? How?
You say 'it could all lead to ....'? Where, for better and for worse?

What examples and pictures have you got of multi function items which are inspiring, appalling, or just plain WTFLMAOesque?

[Cynthetiq]

Multifunctionality makes sense sometimes.

I specifically bought an ebook reader even though I can read ebooks on my laptop, desktop, blackberry, and droid phone.

But what happens when I'm using those other objects is that I tended to not do what I wanted to do and do the other things that it was better at than reading. I'd surf, read emails, watch videos, play games, etc.

My reader is just that. It lets me read and only read.

I'm finding that products aren't adding value when they diminish making a product better for it's core use to just add a bell or whistle for a side use. To me that's no value.

[zenda]

Hi
I, too, have been hankering after the Kindle Reader ... a more focussed and sensible 'containment' of value. Come to think of it, the developers have taken the traditional 'hardware' concept - ink and bound leaves of paper, and have distilled it into 'everything someone could want a book to be' withot losing sight of 'book'

I believe the 'everything can do everything' is still in the honeymoon wave of 'do it because we can' and I hope that heads will turn more consistently toward 'ergonomics of function' and user interface. I think that, once the smoke has cleared, there will emerge some magnificent products.

[MSD]

Most people want a camera and music player in their phone these days. It would be more expensive to build phones without those features for a few people, so you're benefitting from the economy of scale just like everyone else. If you break down cost of development per feature and look at the individual component cost of hardwate like the camera in a phone, you're paying almost nothing for it.

[bagatelle]

I need mobile phone only to make calls and send text messages. I had a good phone, cheap since bought as used, fit well in my hand, I could type and talk and it had a very simple memory game (Pairs) - yes, I know I'm dull.

The microphone broke and hubby got me a new mobile. It has a poor quality camera function - not even a possibility to purchase a cable for downloading the photos on PC in that model, no need for that though, because the photos are so poor quality - games I don't like to play, it's very slim phone and often slips through my fingers on the floor.

Only thing better is the ability to choose from more ringtones, yet I only have one for all callers, I don't need to fiddle with music on my mobile. I haven't bothered finding out about other features, I still keep the old mobile on my bedside table as an alarm clock, since it's so easy to set and I play the Pairs.

Mobiles get smaller, but my hands still are the same size. It's annoying to use mobile for typing more than is necessary, since the keyboard is so fitting, computer screen is better than mobile screen for viewing things like photos.

Even though hunched over keyboard all day long might not be an ideal position, I dont like to see the teens curled up in one corner of sofa and moving their thumbs only to get connected with the outer world.

Yes, I'm the one who wants the phone separate from the camera, internet functions and even kitchen appliances.

Imagine you have a wonder machine in your kitchen brewing your coffee, baking bread, making waffles, mixing the dough and feeding the cat. It breaks and you can't do any of these things separately.

My future vision:

Navigator with voice guidance is handy when driving a car. Someone comes up with the idea, that voice should be added to all possible appliances (it is in many things already) to guide us in using them inspired by a thought we don't need to print or read any manuals: more trees are saved.

Big chance for voice industry to grow. If you grew up used to your mother nagging, you can bring piece of home with you, when you move on your own and have the fridge and oven - even the toilet seat! - remind you of all those things your mother did - in her own voice!

Downside is, the kids will have difficulties to learn read.