D. Keith Robinson, Blue Flavor’s Creative Director, has published his thoughts on the people-centric web. His article, which is entitled Power of the People, goes into detail about the difference between building for the sake of technology vs. building for your user’s real needs. He calls out some great examples ranging from Amazon, Flickr, Basecamp, and the Gap. Most of all he drive homes the point that when designing for the web people come first, tools and technology come second.
I had a great conversation with a client yesterday. I was complaining about my cell phone — specifically, its diminutive size and tiny buttons which are impossible to press, especially when one is wearing gloves in icy Toronto.
I told him I’d love to own a big, pencil-case sized phone with fat buttons and a casing so solid that I could drop it down a flight of cold concrete stairs without having to do a duct-tape repair afterwards (as I did last weekend).
He showed me his phone. It’s five years old, it’s huge, it’s reliable, and it has all the features he needs (and then some).
It’s an example of the innovator’s dilemma. The old cell/car phones were too big, so consumers rewarded manufacturers that innovated towards a smaller phone. Now, we have phones that are far smaller than they need to be, and in fact are too small to be useful.
Add to this the fact that manufacturers cram features into phones ad nauseum. You can buy a phone that is also a camera, calendar, television, web browser, tablesaw, blender, marriage counselor and pedicurist.
And we buy them because, hey…that’s cool.
Grrrr.
I hope for (but don’t expect) a consumer backlash against technology for technology’s sake. To that end, Blue Flavor, please keep up the good work!
Dave