Industrial Design for focus and Digital well-being
“Imagine the difference in the level of focus between a person using an iPad vs an EP-133 K.O. II for music sampling and composing.”
If the sentence did not make much sense to you, read along to get some important insights about tech.
One of the first principles of consumer tech, I believe, is to help people do tasks with more ease and efficiency. Zooming out a little bit, one big factor that distracts us from achieving this is having “infinite possibilities” around us.
But why did this happen in the first place? My take is — it's mostly due to the development of screens, especially, the TFT LCDs unlocked “infinite possibilities” of GUI. This acts as a mild distraction under the hood, given that you now have more options and possibilities on your screen. Emergence of games and social media amplified this further to make it more significant, but the real problem is — it is still under the hood! This scatters our focus all over, whether we use a smartphone, a desktop, or any other device with a screen. I realized more of this when I had to use a classic Nokia 105 for an entire semester.
In search of doing more, we neglected doing one better. David Eriksson, from teenage engineering spoke about this in a special episode of Waveform Podcast by MKBHD while speaking about their hardware design decisions. The EP-133 K.O. II from their lineup features a “super segment hybrid display” although it could technically have an LCD Display. The reason? David Eriksson said:
“We could add an LCD Display, but as soon as you do, it opens up for menus and other options that complicate things unnecessarily. Honestly, you don’t really need those screens in these devices. It’s fun at the start that you can see all the controls on the screen, but you’ll eventually develop muscle memory, and don’t really need to look at the screen.” (slightly modified)
This is the moment I realized the genius of teenage engineering. “Tech is meant to be helpful while also being spot-on” was such a delightful insight that I got to know. And most probably, this is the reason why teenage engineering hardware is partially analog in nature. Cutting down on digital aspects wherever possible while also maintaining the desired form-factor helps with digital well-being while also making tech more of what it ideally should be.
The episode is so insightful, you might want to check it out:
