Smart is the new Boring
Let your eyes face other things in life than placid screens
Have you ever heard of the word phygital?
It is a marketer’s term for everything that mixes up a Digital and a Physical experience. It is the Holy Grail for retailers and old industries that are struggling to stay alive in today’s digital gold rush.
I hate the word. But I have to admit it is very handy as it incarnates a new paradigm shift that people will remember and most of all: repeat.
Obviously, the buzzword will disappear the day the phygital realm becomes a reality. Just like we won’t call anything “Smart” when controlling a light bulb with a phone is not that big of a deal anymore.
The term Smart once held the same promise as phygital today: a technology that’ll enhance our lives altogether because it’s a new overwhelming iteration that reinvents an aging industry from scratch.
Simply by providing Internet connectivity to “dumb” objects like phones, toothbrushes and refrigerators, we’d have more time to ourselves and enjoy life even more. Unfortunately we can’t really say that’s what happened. There must be something we’re missing during this “smarter-stuff” era.
When it comes to technology, the same goes with objects as with people. Better always beats smarter.
At Qleek, we think we’re missing the most important: what people really want. No one wants smarter products. People seek experiences that make their lives better. We think phygital products have the potential to enhance our lives without losing any benefit of the digital world.
Digital products are generally designed to maximize how much time you spend on them. MIT anthropologist Natasha Schüll calls this designing the “machine zone.” Schüll describes it as a sort of a pathological annihilation to screens during which - and we all experienced it - we lose control of ourselves and drift into long periods of time with no human connection whatsoever. This is where smartphone addiction and the Facebook dweller effect come from.
“If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.” — Robert M. Pirsig
Because they are inherently designed to relegate screens to the background, phygital experiences will leave more room for social and self-fulfillment quality time, out of the machine zone and far from compulsive behaviours we often have with solely digital experiences.
By working on intertwining the literal and virtual into one frill-less experience, we want to give you time out of attention-fueled apps and let your eyes face other beautiful things in life than placid screens.
Let your eyes face other beautiful things in life than placid screens.
This quest to tranquility has never meant a quest to smartness for us. Aspiring to “the Good Life” is not aspiring to constant connectivity, never-ending notifications and chronic procrastination. Empowering people to do better with their time is what should drive designers, engineers and developers. This is what drives us.
Schüll and her contemporaries argue that companies should embrace Design Ethics that set metrics other than “time on site,” “stickiness,” and “engagement” to measure their users satisfaction. We can’t agree more.
We love to think that this is what we are doing by designing punctual experiences that don’t require much more time than what’s needed to be accomplished.
A place where you jump in and jump out only when needed.
