The future of product is no-product
As digital products take a bigger role in our daily lives, the less they ought to command our attention
Then
It's my first Android phone. I fiddle with it, unimpressed. On stage, Google Glass is all the rage. Then Google Now happens. I'm flabbergasted: this is what the future looks like, not dorky gadgets over your face. It's 2011 and I'm at Google IO , and Now is the impressive idea I see. Surprisingly, no one is talking about it. Cut.
Now
— What are your favorite products right now? She asks.
I gasp, then slowly work my way towards an answer.
— Slack! I spend a huge part of my day within it. It reduced — drastically — the amount of email I receive. Better still, the email I'm getting is of the best kind: well thought, important and worthy of reference. Fleeting ideas stream through Slack.
— And Medium! Daily, at least one hour of reading. It has accomplished two seemingly conflicting goals. For starters it is a social network: I'm introduced to interesting people I didn't knew and I straighten ties to previous acquaintances. Honest, valuable discovery. It took time away from longer form news and books. A place where ideas bigger than tweets and smaller than books live.
— There's Instagram. It does wonders no matter how little time I dedicate to it. Instagram has this magical ability to briefly lift you from reality. Light as a feather. Every interaction with it is short, pleasant, and I have many of these every day.
There. A clear line of reasoning. I can see what these have in common: how much time I spend on them. Time must be a good proxy for liking.
Yet, somehow, something is amiss. A full day passes by and I'm still left with that uncomfortable feeling I'm forgetting something.
I'm not there
What kept me from seeing it is the very thing that makes it great: invisibility.
I assumed great products equal lots of time engaged. I barely ever use Google Photos. An hour a week at most, way less than the others products I listed. How can it be great?
Photo apps have four fundamental roles: storing, organizing, viewing and sharing memories. The first two are chores nobody wants to do. The last two are fun, but you can't do them unless you've stored and organized your stuff.
The beauty of Google Photos is that it just sits there, silently, working in the background. Once enabled your photos will be dutifully stored, safer than you could ever do. By leveraging uncannily accurate computer vision and smart clustering, Photos is able to create collections on the fly. I query it for “Arthur at the beach” and that’s what it gives me: pictures of me taken at the beach. I ask it about my cats, my son’s birth or a long gone girlfriend. Google Photo gracefully gives me what I want. It can also create albums from obvious things, such as a trip to San Francisco, but also subtler events like a Sunday at the part with my son. Sharing is dead easy thanks to a efficient UX and the availability of your contacts from Android or Gmail.
The genius of Photos is how it has removed features, at least on the surface. It has obliviated the need to upload and organize the ever increasing amount of photos I take daily. The small amount of time spent with Photos is no accident, rather the result of thoughtful work.
Less and More
value = joy / soul-sucking
The ultimate measure of a product's success is precisely the amount of value discounting the amount of perceived effort it requires me. Product people know this by heart: remove all friction is a mantra that never gets old. We fight it when we optimize conversion funnels, engagement hooks and social sharing.
But seldomly do we see browsing and searching as chores like we do for signups and tagging. Removing barriers to usage is great, but forgoing usage all together is marvellous. As digital products intertwine with our lives, the greater the opportunities to blur it's very presence. Being part of your inner life is the greatest barrier to entry: switching it requires to alter your habits.
This trend is not about photos at all, but a bigger, inevitable one. Messaging interfaces blur our understanding of what apps are. Amazon's Echo sits there patiently listening. Back to 2011, Google Now. It has missed mainstream attention precisely because it's hard for us to see it as product: it's just there. The better it works, the less you see it.
This trend is everywhere. App fatigue. Less chrome. Great products are about watching drama, listening to music, saving moments, sharing ideas; not using a product. People don’t read Medium, they read stories. They don't listen to Spotify, they listen to music. Products are artificial and restricting. We can, and should, get rid of them.
If you work on Product Design, this idea should unsettle you: are invisible products the end of brands? Quite the opposite, really. The day I no longer think about Spotify is the day Spotify became music itself. This is powerful, something brands could only dream of: becoming you. Uber becomes "I need to go somewhere". Airbnb is now travelling. Netflix is entertainment.
This is the golden age for Product designers: one where your product can be the thing itself. The great products of tomorrow are about adding abilities to people. The less awareness of their existence they command, the better. It’s finally within our reach to make Clarke’s third law a reality. All you have to do is to make your product disappear.
Side Notes
- One can argue this is a direct consequence of user centric design, and one would be right. Putting the user first is imperative for mingling product and one's inner life.
- As I think of this phenomenon, I can't help but remember of Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface. The book meticulously makes the case for tasks, not objects. His idea of software as plugins, capabilities, blending into a stream of actions is vexingly prescient.
