Can tech be too smart for its own good?

While looking into UX design for IoT, I got served an ad-like article about the supposed issues smart tumblers can solve. A triple digit priced tumbler that solves the problem of keeping your drink of choice at your preferred temperature for hours. Something I found funny, as my very dumb thermos does the same thing for 10% of the price. This smart device also boasts that it has a long battery life and can connect via Bluetooth to any smart device you have, with an app (which tracks your location and requires signing in, as this TikTok shows). It can also track your caffeine intake and connect to Apple Health. This smart tumbler solves zero problems I have, and adds in about five new problems I wouldn’t have even considered before.

(via Matthew Miller/ZDNET)

While specialty products have their place, when it comes to smart products like this, they seem to care more about making up issues to solve with technology rather than focusing in on what could actually be useful for consumers. Another example is the infamous Juicero that was the source of internet mockery back in 2017; a smart juicer that requires internet connection to press a bag of overpriced juice, that got $120m in Silicone Valley funding. And now with the rapid improvements of hot topics like spatial computing, smart cars, and IoT, what does this mean for product design like this? Are things getting too smart, and how can we make intelligent products that don’t inadvertently make things worse?

More Features, Less Use

At the beginning of this February, the Massachusetts legislature moved to ban the usage of VR headsets while driving. This came after videos spread of various drivers behind the wheel of automated Teslas and Cybertrucks using the newly released Apple Vision Pro. Many of these videos did turn out to be skits, though there were at least a few showing people actively driving with the headsets on. This, as a whole, is an area that law and design has been slow to catch up on. What happens when, in the quest to be as advanced as quickly as possible, unnecessary or even dangerous user experiences are encouraged? Is trying to make every possible task and object smart truly the future?

(via TikTok/The Medium)

Smart cars are likely the topic most people are familiar with. Many of us have gotten into a car different than our own, only to find it has the most unintuitive, slow, and antiquated tablet control panel for all its basic functions. This design has everything from adjusting the temperature to tuning the radio requiring you to turn your attention away from the road to jump through buried menus. While considered smarter and more useful due to being able to pack more functions in, consumers don’t agree. As of 2023, there’s been a consecutive decline in satisfaction from car consumers for the first time in almost 30 years, with particular points of ire going towards car “infotainment”.

For all the arguments of these devices solving plenty of problems, these solutions still seem to be outweighed by the problems they create for consumers. From driving in silence because you weren’t able to figure out how this car model wants you to connect to your music fast enough, to your entire car being practically unusable due to a broken touchscreen. Despite this, they are still heavily pushed by many manufacturers, with even more basic car functions being put behind touchscreens.

The Safety Factor

There’s multiple studies showing that touchscreen controls in cars can take people’s eyes off the road for over twice as long as older, analog controlled cars. Despite this, the size and the possibility of distraction of these screens only gets larger as they take over more basic features of a car. It gets to the point where it seems to be a case of “the law isn’t stopping us, so let’s show off and be increasingly flashy until we’re eventually stopped”. After all, we’re legally not allowed to have a cell phone in our view while driving. How different is this, logistically?

However, that is all about cars with smarter features built in. What about the truly smart cars with automation? For starters, this February there were not only more pedestrian injuries from self-driving taxis, but Apple’s car, “Project Titan,” was announced to be properly cancelled. Articles about it speculated that Apple is too controlling of its image to want to release a product that has a high likelihood of injuring or even killing people. What perplexes me is why this is considered to be something specific to Apple’s brand. Shouldn’t a new and smart technology be expected from any company to purely reduce risks to its consumers? Products that come with increased concerns for public safety, and thus causing more issues than are being solved, are not particularly intelligent.

(via Robin Buckson / The Detroit News)

The Future of Smart

Naturally, as time goes on, more items are going to become connected to the internet and each other, and this will have an incredible amount of beneficial uses for people and communities. The issue is that, currently, the focus seems to be on what is flashiest, easiest, and fastest to get into consumers hands and have viral marketing campaigns, rather than do what makes a product actually smart: increasing its uses, making its owner’s life easier, and do what its user wants faster and better than before.

I’d like to take a look at one more product that contains many of the issues I’ve discussed with current smart technology: Honda’s “extended reality” (XR) mix of VR and its Uni-One wheelchairs that were shown off late February. Users shift their body weight to move the wheelchair, which is connected to the VR headset which can show a selection of games. It’s claimed to be for amusement parks and retail centers. Amusement parks, I can only imagine, would be frightened of the potential issues that can arise from a fully user-controlled ride. That industry has already wasted a lot of money on VR roller coasters, which had a multitude of issues with cleaning, keeping devices charged, headsets overheating after being in the sun all day, and other logistical nightmares. Malls sometimes have small areas for showing off gaming tech, but they’re small and closed off areas that don’t restrict the traffic flow. How would a moving wheelchair work in that situation?

Notably not mentioned in their presentation is the disabled community. In fact, there is a decently sized subsection of wheelchair users who would be unable to use this sort of chair entirely. It particularly stands out to me that the first spatial computing technology majorly being shown off using disability technology, excludes the disabled community from the conversation entirely. Instead, the focus is on flashy futurism and reality avoidance. In the end, it all comes down to what products, and for who, are we trying to make smart, and why?

(via Honda/The Verge)

Conclusion

Smart technologies are uniquely difficult. Their promise is to solve their users’ problems and unlock vast uses, but often add friction and complexity that didn’t exist before. And often, it feels as though companies take the easier route of creating problems people didn’t know they had to justify the smart products existence, rather than design and develop one from the ground up to actually be fully beneficial. No product will make everyone happy, but if we can accept that smart technology takes much longer and needs more care in its development, then we can respect that such products also need more care and thought put into their design as well. And sometimes, we can realize that the best design is not driving your automated vehicle with a VR headset and smart tumbler, but a instead taking the train with a tablet and a thermos.

Sources and Further Reading


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