In the best of all possible worlds, this is the answer that Barack Obama gave to the question in Wednesday's debate about his refusal to wear a flag pin:
"One of the problems we have in America right now is that too many people confuse symbols with the principles that those symbols stand for. We claim that terrorists 'hate us for our freedoms', yet we're willing to give up those very freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. This administration has suspended Habeas Corpus, circumvented legal protections against spying on Americans, violated Constitutional mandates for due process and against cruel and unusual punishment, kept vital information from the American people about Iraq and the war on terror, and carried out other policies that fly in the face of the Constitution and our deepest values as Americans. Yet, they wave the flag and claim to be patriots. Let me tell you something: wearing the flag does not make you a patriot, particularly when you fight against free speech, due process, and the very liberties that it stands for. And not wearing the flag doesn't mean you're not patriotic, particularly when you are fighting for those values. When we go to war, we are not fighting for the flag; we're fighting for what it stands for. We're not fighting for the flag, we're fighting for the people who it represents. And when we confuse the symbol for the principle, we risk giving up the very thing that gives the flag its value."
Friday, April 18, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Complexity
Law professor Michael Greenberger recently appeared on Fresh Air to explain the subprime meltdown and the overall state of the economy. He said that, while the US economy used to be based on investments in tangible assets and enterprises, it is now largely based on financial instruments that are essentially bets on the directions that the tangible assets and enterprises will move in value. He called it a "shadow economy" because a large percentage of its overall value is based on these instruments - derivatives, monetized baskets of assets such as loan portfolios, etc. In other words, much of our economic activity is based on what the tangible assets represent rather than on the assets themselves. I'd call it a second-order economy, perhaps.
It seems to me that this movement away from tangible asset to intangible derivative of the asset owes much of its existence to the Black-Scholes option pricing model and its relatives. This model made pricing an option apparently as reliable as pricing the underlying asset. It inspired so much faith that whole financial industries were built on its foundations. Perhaps the early collapse of Long Term Capital Management, which required the last large Wall Street bailout prior to Bear Stearns, should have been a warning that option pricing wasn't as reliable as it appeared to be.
Nonetheless, heedless of the LTCM fiasco, derivatives became the basis for huge investments in, among other things, baskets of mortgages. Because banks were able to sell their loans to aggregators that collected thousands of loans into securities that they could slice into derivatives and resell, the banks that originated the loans had no further incentive to ensure that the loans would actually be repaid, and every incentive to make and sell as many loans as possible. Consequently, no one knows how many of these loans will actually be repaid.
So here's the problem. Because no one knows how many of these loans will actually be repaid, no one knows what the true values of the derivatives are. When Citi Group or Merrill Lynch or Bear Stearns take writedowns at the end of a quarter, they don't know if those writedowns will be sufficient to cover the actual losses or not. No one knows - without knowing the actual risk underlying the instrument, there's no principled way to value it.
Here's where LTCM comes in. The mathematical models that generate derivative prices are so complex that humans can't understand them - hence, Long Term Capital Management encounters a scenario that they didn't anticipate and their house of cards crumbles around them. The underpinnings of the derivative market suddenly look shaky today, and the economy collapses around the vacuum created by a relatively small number of unpaid mortgages.
All of this makes me wonder - if the economy is built on financial instruments that no one actually understands, how reliable can it be? If software and operating systems are so complex that no one can actually understand how they work, is that why Windows and some applications are so unreliable? Is that why my old Windows Mobile phone kept having problems? Are we condemned to a world where our basic tools are so complex that, in the end, we can't trust them?
It seems to me that this movement away from tangible asset to intangible derivative of the asset owes much of its existence to the Black-Scholes option pricing model and its relatives. This model made pricing an option apparently as reliable as pricing the underlying asset. It inspired so much faith that whole financial industries were built on its foundations. Perhaps the early collapse of Long Term Capital Management, which required the last large Wall Street bailout prior to Bear Stearns, should have been a warning that option pricing wasn't as reliable as it appeared to be.
Nonetheless, heedless of the LTCM fiasco, derivatives became the basis for huge investments in, among other things, baskets of mortgages. Because banks were able to sell their loans to aggregators that collected thousands of loans into securities that they could slice into derivatives and resell, the banks that originated the loans had no further incentive to ensure that the loans would actually be repaid, and every incentive to make and sell as many loans as possible. Consequently, no one knows how many of these loans will actually be repaid.
So here's the problem. Because no one knows how many of these loans will actually be repaid, no one knows what the true values of the derivatives are. When Citi Group or Merrill Lynch or Bear Stearns take writedowns at the end of a quarter, they don't know if those writedowns will be sufficient to cover the actual losses or not. No one knows - without knowing the actual risk underlying the instrument, there's no principled way to value it.
Here's where LTCM comes in. The mathematical models that generate derivative prices are so complex that humans can't understand them - hence, Long Term Capital Management encounters a scenario that they didn't anticipate and their house of cards crumbles around them. The underpinnings of the derivative market suddenly look shaky today, and the economy collapses around the vacuum created by a relatively small number of unpaid mortgages.
All of this makes me wonder - if the economy is built on financial instruments that no one actually understands, how reliable can it be? If software and operating systems are so complex that no one can actually understand how they work, is that why Windows and some applications are so unreliable? Is that why my old Windows Mobile phone kept having problems? Are we condemned to a world where our basic tools are so complex that, in the end, we can't trust them?
Saturday, February 9, 2008
A Technology Tipping Point
Let's think about technology, for a few minutes, in terms of supply and demand. Not in the economic sense, though. In the sense that demand represents what users want from technology and supply is what technology can provide. Until now, we've clearly been in a state where supply hasn't quite met demand. Now, we may be at the point where the two are balanced, and supply is about to overtake demand. What happens then?
I used to have a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. It used FM synthesis to produce a wide range of sounds, based on the combinations of six sine wave generators. The sound you got depended on how you configured the generators to either sound independently or modulate each other, and what output levels, frequencies, amplitude envelopes, and other attributes you assigned to each generator. The number of possible combinations made a tremendous range of sounds possible, but the synthesizer had several obvious limitations: a relatively small keyboard (not full piano range), an inability to produce the very complex waveforms of natural instruments, and no onboard effects. It also used 12-bit signal processing, so it couldn't produce sounds at full fidelity. Although it was a wonderful instrument, and its limitations inspired a lot of edge-pushing exploration, it was easy to imagine what a better instrument might be like. In other words, there was still more demand than supply.
The synthesizer I have today is capable of full fidelity output, has a full weighted keyboard, contains a massive library of both sampled natural instruments and synthetic ones, and has an onboard sequencer, mixer, and effects. If the sound you want isn't in the built-in library, it also has sampling capabilities so you can add your own. You can dissect a sound to its essential waveforms and edit them to your heart's content, making it possible to both tweak existing sounds and come up with entirely new ones. It's so capable that it's hard for me to see, from a musical perspective, how it could be improved on. In this case, supply is exceeding demand, because I haven't come close to any of its limits, and I probably never will.
So what happens? In my case, there's no compelling reason to explore the limits of the machine any more, so my music has become more focused on the composition than on the sounds. And I think that this may become a common reaction as supply surpasses demand.
Consider movie special effects, for example. Over the past thirty years or so, special effects have played a prominent role in driving movie development and audience interest. People would flock to movies with awe-inspiring special effects and stunts. Now, however, we're reaching the point where an average audience can't distinguish between effect and reality, and effects that used to inspire awe are now routine. Again, supply is starting to exceed demand. Is it possible that, when special effects are no longer special, movies will have to re-focus on compelling stories and characters?
I think this is a universal phenomenon. Digital cameras are reaching the resolution of film. Web access is becoming ubiquitous. Video games and TV are reaching naturalistic fidelity. Social networking and wireless technologies are dissolving the separation of geographic distance. So, again, what happens next?
First, I think we'll see more and more evidence that people don't know how to make the most effective use of the technology supply. The TV coverage of last week's Super Tuesday primaries provided at least two wonderful examples: CNN's Anderson Cooper holding a platter with a mark that allowed the network to super-impose a standing pie chart that moved with the platter, and Fox News showing a collection of bar graphs that stood on a rotating platter like salt shakers on a lazy Susan. In both cases, the technology was clearly an unnecessary distraction; not only did it add nothing of value, it actually made it harder to interpret the information that was supposedly being presented. I'm sure it made Edward Tufte's head spin.
More seriously, I wonder if we may see a slow-down in the technology market within the next five years or so. I've written before about feature saturation - what incentive do people have to buy new products when they don't use all the features of the ones they already own? We may be at that point, with technology supply exceeding demand, where new product improvements aren't compelling enough to drive sales any more.
This is less true, though, of wireless technology. I think that's the one place where the limitations of today's technology are still so visible, and where improvements are still so easy to imagine and their benefits so apparent, that demand still exceeds supply. I think this is intensified by the growing awareness of technology and its benefits in the general population - with more users becoming more interested in technology in general, demand for improvements in wireless devices will continue to increase rapidly, so it may be many years before supply catches up to demand.
There are two other places where opportunities for improvements still exist: reliability and usability. Again, I've written about usability as a market discriminator before, and the iPhone is clearly demonstrating that theme. The less obvious one, though, is reliability. As technology becomes more complex, its potential failure modes become more numerous and more obscure. Couple that with the security vulnerabilities of networked devices, and the potential for technology to become more of a hindrance than a help is clear. Perhaps this suggests a maturity path for technology: features, then usability, then reliability. With the exception of wireless technologies, I think we're almost through the features stage and partway through the usability phase for most technologies. Someday, I hope that everything I might buy will be both usable and reliable. At that point, supply will truly meet demand.
I used to have a Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer. It used FM synthesis to produce a wide range of sounds, based on the combinations of six sine wave generators. The sound you got depended on how you configured the generators to either sound independently or modulate each other, and what output levels, frequencies, amplitude envelopes, and other attributes you assigned to each generator. The number of possible combinations made a tremendous range of sounds possible, but the synthesizer had several obvious limitations: a relatively small keyboard (not full piano range), an inability to produce the very complex waveforms of natural instruments, and no onboard effects. It also used 12-bit signal processing, so it couldn't produce sounds at full fidelity. Although it was a wonderful instrument, and its limitations inspired a lot of edge-pushing exploration, it was easy to imagine what a better instrument might be like. In other words, there was still more demand than supply.
The synthesizer I have today is capable of full fidelity output, has a full weighted keyboard, contains a massive library of both sampled natural instruments and synthetic ones, and has an onboard sequencer, mixer, and effects. If the sound you want isn't in the built-in library, it also has sampling capabilities so you can add your own. You can dissect a sound to its essential waveforms and edit them to your heart's content, making it possible to both tweak existing sounds and come up with entirely new ones. It's so capable that it's hard for me to see, from a musical perspective, how it could be improved on. In this case, supply is exceeding demand, because I haven't come close to any of its limits, and I probably never will.
So what happens? In my case, there's no compelling reason to explore the limits of the machine any more, so my music has become more focused on the composition than on the sounds. And I think that this may become a common reaction as supply surpasses demand.
Consider movie special effects, for example. Over the past thirty years or so, special effects have played a prominent role in driving movie development and audience interest. People would flock to movies with awe-inspiring special effects and stunts. Now, however, we're reaching the point where an average audience can't distinguish between effect and reality, and effects that used to inspire awe are now routine. Again, supply is starting to exceed demand. Is it possible that, when special effects are no longer special, movies will have to re-focus on compelling stories and characters?
I think this is a universal phenomenon. Digital cameras are reaching the resolution of film. Web access is becoming ubiquitous. Video games and TV are reaching naturalistic fidelity. Social networking and wireless technologies are dissolving the separation of geographic distance. So, again, what happens next?
First, I think we'll see more and more evidence that people don't know how to make the most effective use of the technology supply. The TV coverage of last week's Super Tuesday primaries provided at least two wonderful examples: CNN's Anderson Cooper holding a platter with a mark that allowed the network to super-impose a standing pie chart that moved with the platter, and Fox News showing a collection of bar graphs that stood on a rotating platter like salt shakers on a lazy Susan. In both cases, the technology was clearly an unnecessary distraction; not only did it add nothing of value, it actually made it harder to interpret the information that was supposedly being presented. I'm sure it made Edward Tufte's head spin.
More seriously, I wonder if we may see a slow-down in the technology market within the next five years or so. I've written before about feature saturation - what incentive do people have to buy new products when they don't use all the features of the ones they already own? We may be at that point, with technology supply exceeding demand, where new product improvements aren't compelling enough to drive sales any more.
This is less true, though, of wireless technology. I think that's the one place where the limitations of today's technology are still so visible, and where improvements are still so easy to imagine and their benefits so apparent, that demand still exceeds supply. I think this is intensified by the growing awareness of technology and its benefits in the general population - with more users becoming more interested in technology in general, demand for improvements in wireless devices will continue to increase rapidly, so it may be many years before supply catches up to demand.
There are two other places where opportunities for improvements still exist: reliability and usability. Again, I've written about usability as a market discriminator before, and the iPhone is clearly demonstrating that theme. The less obvious one, though, is reliability. As technology becomes more complex, its potential failure modes become more numerous and more obscure. Couple that with the security vulnerabilities of networked devices, and the potential for technology to become more of a hindrance than a help is clear. Perhaps this suggests a maturity path for technology: features, then usability, then reliability. With the exception of wireless technologies, I think we're almost through the features stage and partway through the usability phase for most technologies. Someday, I hope that everything I might buy will be both usable and reliable. At that point, supply will truly meet demand.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Shooting Yourself in the Foot in the Middle of a Class War
I've decided to broaden the content of my blog to include thoughts in areas beyond human factors and user centered design. Politics, for example. Actually, you could make a case that politics are very closely related to the user experience of living in, and interfacing with, society at large.
I've noticed that most of the people I know who work in this area tend to be either liberal or moderate, and I wonder if it's because at the very heart of human factors is the recognition that people, in all their varieties, need to be accommodated by systems. It seems to me that liberalism and human factors both put people first, to borrow a phrase, the former in terms of societal priorities and the latter in terms of systems and product design.
So here's a first contribution to this area: an assertion that the subprime mortgage mess was based on a large bet that the upper classes put on the financial health of the lower and middle classes. And that the bet was essentially illogical because of all that's been done to weaken those latter classes over the past decade or so.
Here's a short list of ways the lower and middle classes have suffered in that time:
So the lower and middle classes believe they have a stake in the health of the upper classes. What does this have to do with the subprime mortgage mess? Because, after reaping the benefits of a weakening lower- and middle-class, the upper classes placed a huge, unsecured bet that all the people in those classes could pay off any mortgage they signed up for, and bought billions of dollars' worth of securities derived from these mortgages. In essence, they placed a big bet on the health of those classes after doing whatever they could, in the preceding years, to weaken them.
I suspect that people in the financial industries won't recognize this tacit investment. I suspect that many of the conservatives in those classes will continue to advocate policies that continue to weaken the lower and middle classes. Ironically, though, this would further erode the value of their own investments in those classes.
If they did recognize this tacit investment, I think it would be a good thing. Just as, I believe, trickle-down economics has given the lower and middle classes an illusory stake in the health of the upper classes, mortgage-derived securities give the upper classes a real stake in the health of the lower and middle classes. I would love to see them recognize this stake, and start taking an interest in the real health of those classes. Perhaps then we would start to see better schools, better social safety nets, and other mechanisms that would benefit the lower and middle classes directly. Because they would also indirectly benefit the upper classes by protecting their investments.
I've noticed that most of the people I know who work in this area tend to be either liberal or moderate, and I wonder if it's because at the very heart of human factors is the recognition that people, in all their varieties, need to be accommodated by systems. It seems to me that liberalism and human factors both put people first, to borrow a phrase, the former in terms of societal priorities and the latter in terms of systems and product design.
So here's a first contribution to this area: an assertion that the subprime mortgage mess was based on a large bet that the upper classes put on the financial health of the lower and middle classes. And that the bet was essentially illogical because of all that's been done to weaken those latter classes over the past decade or so.
Here's a short list of ways the lower and middle classes have suffered in that time:
- falling real wages
- less access to health insurance
- bankruptcy "reform"
- welfare reform
- outsourcing
- the growing wealth gap
- rising education costs
- fewer social services
- the Iraq war, whose direct participants are disproportionately from these classes.
So the lower and middle classes believe they have a stake in the health of the upper classes. What does this have to do with the subprime mortgage mess? Because, after reaping the benefits of a weakening lower- and middle-class, the upper classes placed a huge, unsecured bet that all the people in those classes could pay off any mortgage they signed up for, and bought billions of dollars' worth of securities derived from these mortgages. In essence, they placed a big bet on the health of those classes after doing whatever they could, in the preceding years, to weaken them.
I suspect that people in the financial industries won't recognize this tacit investment. I suspect that many of the conservatives in those classes will continue to advocate policies that continue to weaken the lower and middle classes. Ironically, though, this would further erode the value of their own investments in those classes.
If they did recognize this tacit investment, I think it would be a good thing. Just as, I believe, trickle-down economics has given the lower and middle classes an illusory stake in the health of the upper classes, mortgage-derived securities give the upper classes a real stake in the health of the lower and middle classes. I would love to see them recognize this stake, and start taking an interest in the real health of those classes. Perhaps then we would start to see better schools, better social safety nets, and other mechanisms that would benefit the lower and middle classes directly. Because they would also indirectly benefit the upper classes by protecting their investments.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
User Fiendly
No, that title is not a typo. If you didn't think it was, look again. If you noticed, you may not be surprised that my topic is voice response systems.
I can always tell when my wife is negotiating a company's telephone system's speech recognition menus by the note of restrained frustration in her voice. I thought of this when I answered a call from Verizon Wireless wanting to survey me about their own voice response system for customer service. The first question was, "Did you use the voice response system, or did you choose to use the telephone keypad?" When I said, "Telephone keypad," that was all they wanted to know.
For at least several decades now, clueless executives have somehow been under the impression that speech recognition is the magic bullet that will make all technology approachable and user friendly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember when the same magical qualities were attributed to GUI's? A thousand graphical interfaces ensued that were just as hard to use as DOS or UNIX.
The key point that I think these people miss is that it's not the form of the interaction (text, graphical, key presses, voice), but rather what you do with it. The intuitive nature of the graphical interface derives from the use of appropriate metaphors; the graphics simply enable a broader range of possible metaphors than is allowed by a command line interface. Similarly, speech recognition does not itself make a system easier to use - it can actually make it much harder to use. What matters is what you do with it.
On this point, a fully functional and reliable natural language system would be ideal. Lacking that, a constrained, limited vocabulary is second best, but still probably slower and therefore less desirable than simple key presses. An open-ended, pseudo-natural language interface that sometimes works and sometimes fails in unpredictable ways, doesn't react appropriately to expressions of frustration, and gets in the way instead of greasing the skids is the worst possible solution. Yet that's the one we have now. So why, exactly, do companies think this is easier than pressing keys?
I can always tell when my wife is negotiating a company's telephone system's speech recognition menus by the note of restrained frustration in her voice. I thought of this when I answered a call from Verizon Wireless wanting to survey me about their own voice response system for customer service. The first question was, "Did you use the voice response system, or did you choose to use the telephone keypad?" When I said, "Telephone keypad," that was all they wanted to know.
For at least several decades now, clueless executives have somehow been under the impression that speech recognition is the magic bullet that will make all technology approachable and user friendly. Nothing could be further from the truth. Remember when the same magical qualities were attributed to GUI's? A thousand graphical interfaces ensued that were just as hard to use as DOS or UNIX.
The key point that I think these people miss is that it's not the form of the interaction (text, graphical, key presses, voice), but rather what you do with it. The intuitive nature of the graphical interface derives from the use of appropriate metaphors; the graphics simply enable a broader range of possible metaphors than is allowed by a command line interface. Similarly, speech recognition does not itself make a system easier to use - it can actually make it much harder to use. What matters is what you do with it.
On this point, a fully functional and reliable natural language system would be ideal. Lacking that, a constrained, limited vocabulary is second best, but still probably slower and therefore less desirable than simple key presses. An open-ended, pseudo-natural language interface that sometimes works and sometimes fails in unpredictable ways, doesn't react appropriately to expressions of frustration, and gets in the way instead of greasing the skids is the worst possible solution. Yet that's the one we have now. So why, exactly, do companies think this is easier than pressing keys?
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Blame the User
“Oh, come on,” Richard said quietly to himself.
“Sorry?” Bill, or Bob, or whatever lifted his head from behind Richard’s monitor.
“Sorry, not you,” Richard said. “It’s this stupid magazine. Everyone’s blaming the financial industry for the subprime mess, but what about the home buyers? Why doesn’t anyone make them take responsibility for signing up for loans they couldn’t repay?”
“Good point, sir.” Bob or Bill put his head back down and tapped some more keys.
“How much longer, anyway?” said Richard.
“It’ll be another hour or so. Um, did you change any of the settings on your anti-spyware utility?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. It was running real slow so I changed a bunch of settings in various places until it sped up. Why?”
Bill or Bob sighed. “Well, you’ve got a major spyware infestation, including several stealth keyloggers installed by Trojans. They’ve probably captured all your passwords and account settings. Do you access the company trading accounts from this machine?”
“Sure, I have to. So, what do you have to do?”
“Well, sir, you should probably make sure there haven’t been any unauthorized transactions from your account. In the short term, I can get you up and running but I’ll have to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows. You’ll lose all your files, but your computer will be up again. I may be able to restore your files from backup but I’ll have to make sure they’re clean.”
“OK. Whatever.” Richard went back to his reading while his computer made the Windows shutdown and startup noises several times in a row. Finally, he folded the magazine and hurled it across the room, neatly hitting the rim of his wastebasket and knocking it over. “Damn. You’d think people would know better than to sign false income statements. I just don’t get it.”
He pondered for a few more minutes. Then, “If people aren’t going to be responsible, how do you keep it from happening again?”
Bob or Bill looked up and hesitated for a moment. “Well, sir, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t let anyone use a computer unless they knew what they were doing.”
“Sorry?” Bill, or Bob, or whatever lifted his head from behind Richard’s monitor.
“Sorry, not you,” Richard said. “It’s this stupid magazine. Everyone’s blaming the financial industry for the subprime mess, but what about the home buyers? Why doesn’t anyone make them take responsibility for signing up for loans they couldn’t repay?”
“Good point, sir.” Bob or Bill put his head back down and tapped some more keys.
“How much longer, anyway?” said Richard.
“It’ll be another hour or so. Um, did you change any of the settings on your anti-spyware utility?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. It was running real slow so I changed a bunch of settings in various places until it sped up. Why?”
Bill or Bob sighed. “Well, you’ve got a major spyware infestation, including several stealth keyloggers installed by Trojans. They’ve probably captured all your passwords and account settings. Do you access the company trading accounts from this machine?”
“Sure, I have to. So, what do you have to do?”
“Well, sir, you should probably make sure there haven’t been any unauthorized transactions from your account. In the short term, I can get you up and running but I’ll have to reformat your drive and reinstall Windows. You’ll lose all your files, but your computer will be up again. I may be able to restore your files from backup but I’ll have to make sure they’re clean.”
“OK. Whatever.” Richard went back to his reading while his computer made the Windows shutdown and startup noises several times in a row. Finally, he folded the magazine and hurled it across the room, neatly hitting the rim of his wastebasket and knocking it over. “Damn. You’d think people would know better than to sign false income statements. I just don’t get it.”
He pondered for a few more minutes. Then, “If people aren’t going to be responsible, how do you keep it from happening again?”
Bob or Bill looked up and hesitated for a moment. “Well, sir, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t let anyone use a computer unless they knew what they were doing.”
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Feature Creep
I've often heard users and designers bemoan "feature creep" and express the wish that manufacturers would limit the number of features supported by their products in order to make them more simple to use. While I sympathize with the goal, I don't think that avoiding feature creep is necessarily the solution.
Consider the iPod. A recent issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine (May 2007) focused on design, and frequently held up the iPod as a design ideal. Don Norman, speaking of Apple in general, stated, "The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics, is keeping features out." Mark Rolston, senior vice president of creative at Frog Design, said, "The most fundamental thing about Apple that's interesting to me is that they're just as smart about what they don't do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things."
So, back to the iPod. It originally began life as a music player. Along the way, it added a calendar, contacts, notes, alarm clocks, world clocks, stopwatch, audiobooks, picture viewer, video, podcasts, and games, and it can be used as an external hard drive, even a bootable one for an OS X machine. The iPod Touch adds internet surfing, a You Tube viewer, online access to the iTunes music store, and the ability to buy whatever song you're currently hearing at Starbuck's.
Hmmm... Isn't this the very definition of feature creep?
And yet, the iPod remains beloved, an icon of good design. And very deservedly so.
Because what makes the iPod easy to use is not feature restraint, but rather the fact that all of its many features work the same way. The user need only learn one general rule about how the interface works and can apply that rule to pretty much every function.
So perhaps the trick isn't in avoiding feature creep, but rather in avoiding "rule creep".
Consider the iPod. A recent issue of MIT's Technology Review magazine (May 2007) focused on design, and frequently held up the iPod as a design ideal. Don Norman, speaking of Apple in general, stated, "The hardest part of design, especially consumer electronics, is keeping features out." Mark Rolston, senior vice president of creative at Frog Design, said, "The most fundamental thing about Apple that's interesting to me is that they're just as smart about what they don't do. Great products can be made more beautiful by omitting things."
So, back to the iPod. It originally began life as a music player. Along the way, it added a calendar, contacts, notes, alarm clocks, world clocks, stopwatch, audiobooks, picture viewer, video, podcasts, and games, and it can be used as an external hard drive, even a bootable one for an OS X machine. The iPod Touch adds internet surfing, a You Tube viewer, online access to the iTunes music store, and the ability to buy whatever song you're currently hearing at Starbuck's.
Hmmm... Isn't this the very definition of feature creep?
And yet, the iPod remains beloved, an icon of good design. And very deservedly so.
Because what makes the iPod easy to use is not feature restraint, but rather the fact that all of its many features work the same way. The user need only learn one general rule about how the interface works and can apply that rule to pretty much every function.
So perhaps the trick isn't in avoiding feature creep, but rather in avoiding "rule creep".
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