The key to better technology = less apps?
My takeaways from The Best Interface is No Interface by Golden Krishna
In 2014, Golden Krishna wrote the book The Best Interface is No Interface. This book spoke of the poor ways in which technology is being developed. And while I’m not suggesting his book is the end all for good technology development, I will say that Krishna’s words really stuck with me and became a driving factor for us to create SpotSense, a company that promotes better app design through the use of context awareness.
What makes good technology?
Well, that depends on what you mean by technology, I will be talking mostly about mobile technology. More specifically apps (seeing as they’re what we interact with every day on our phone). But the word app doesn’t always mean good technology.
See, my belief is that technology is something that serves us. Something that connects us with the world around us and creates magical experiences. But the truth is, this isn’t the case.
Let’s set the stage
You just got home from the grocery store and your hands are full of groceries. After fumbling for your keys at the front door, you’re finally inside your house. All you need to do is use the Wemo app to turn on your smart Wemo light switch. You set your groceries on the floor, pull out your phone and…
“Schmitty werber jeger manjensen is now live on Instagram”
“Great, I haven’t talked to him since high school…. I’ll check it out anyway.”
(opens app)
“Wait there’s that girl I’ve never talked to before. You know, the one that liked my picture to get me to follow her?” (I did)
(scrolls through her profile)
“Nice… Maybe someday I’ll see her in real life.”
(returns to home page)
“What was I here for again? Oh right, Schmitty. Looks like he isn’t live anymo….”
(sees ad)
Casual clothing for the trendy dude
“Should I grab a fedora? No… no definitely not.”
(Swipes through ad)
………….
2 minutes later — Baby animal memes
…………….
10 minutes later — Instagram models
Groceries are still sitting on the floor (Don’t get your hopes up — the ice cream is 100% melted), and you’re stuck staring at your phone standing in the kitchen in the dark.
Thank god you got those smart lights.
Apps are reeeaaallly good at fixing your eyes to a screen and taking you away from what’s happening in the real world (or turning on your lights). That’s because the more time you spend staring, the more money they make. It’s a (lazy) simple and (addictive) effective business model. This is what Golden Krishna addressed in his book The Best Interface is No Interface.
“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads, that sucks.” — Jeff Hammerbacher. Former Facebook employee.
One of the principles in The Best Interface is No Interface (TBIINI) that stood out to me was the fact that not everything needs a button on a shiny glass screen. Tech moves fast, and TBIINI was released 2014. However, TBIINI’s principles have remained relevant, most specifically the addiction to screens and ways in which we can solve this. Even apple is trying to crack down.
The Problem
It’s simple, we’re addicted to screens and app companies aren’t helping end this addiction. Actually, they’re doing quite the opposite.
Did you know that adults are spending over 10 hours a day looking at a screen? I’m not kidding. 10 hours. When Krishna published TBIINI 4 years ago, the average was only 8 hours.
Given that the average person is awake 16 hours a day, that means 62% of our waking lives is spent staring into an LED light (Not to mention the negative effects this has physically on us).
The “10 hour” statistic is a direct result of our growing obsession with screen based thinking.
Wait… What’s sceen based thinking?
Screen based thinking is the belief that for your product to be better, you need a fancy UI, and buttons that lead to more buttons. According to screen based thinking, the best products are those that keep users engaged with an app for the longest amount of time.
It focuses less on user experience and more on user interface (form over functionality).
And what’s worse is that screen based thinking has moved from computers and mobile devices to toasters, cars, refrigerators, and $800 juice pouch squeezers.
How can product creators solve this?
Krishna’s first rule to creating better technology is to embrace typical processes and look at the goal of what your users are trying to achieve.
Let’s take an example of something relatively simple. A door lock
End Goal: Getting into your house
Traditional Method: Physical Lock and Physical Key
- Walk up to door
- Find keys in pocket
- Put key in lock
- Turn Key
- Enter house
But how can we make this even better??
With an app of course.
Keys? There’s an app for that.
- Walk up to front door
- Pull phone out of pocket
- Unlock phone
- Exit last app
- Swipe through a sea of icons to find the door lock app
- Open door lock app
- Tap unlock icon — Yes I’m sure I want to unlock the door
- Unlock door
- Enter house
Perfect. We turned a 5 step process into a 9 step process…
Now let’s take a more creative approach and think of what the user is trying to do here. They’re simply trying to get inside their house. In order to do that the door needs to be unlocked. So how can we make that as seamless as possible? Lockitron solved this.
A digital key, but no interface.
- Walk up to door
Phone communicates with lock via bluetooth and unlocks the door from your pocket.
2. Enter house
Now that’s better than both the traditional and “appified” method of unlocking a door. That’s TBIINI.
But what if we could apply this type of thinking to all technology? I like to think about this as cutting out steps in your interface so your app does what your users want without them actually doing anything.
You can apply this same principle to other applications to create something app users haven’t experienced before. Something that makes them say “That’s different” (See Replicating the regular experience).
Last Words
Simply put, app development has become lazy. After over 10 years of mobile apps, we are still believing that they are the solution to everything. And that might be true.
By no means do I think that apps are going to disappear any time soon. I do, however, believe, much like Krishna does, that the way in which we build apps needs to be rethought to focus more on what fits best in the lives of our users.
At SpotSense, we asked ourselves how we could help app developers avoid interfaces. Through tools like Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS, app developers can easily leverage the precise location of their users to provide them with memorable experiences that fit in to how they move throughout the physical world. Want to automatically check your users in to a venue? Or have a terminal display a custom message when your users approach it? Sign up for the beta!
