Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Ben-Adeola

So this is for all my fellow optimisation-junkies out there. This is me telling you to pause and actually look at how much of an upgrade, that upgrade is. As product designers, programmers, or pretty much anyone who’s involved in creating solutions for people, we always have to go back to the drawing boards(or screens) from time to time to see what we can add or remove to make our product better; a constant state of iteration and tweaking. And this is great. The problem is; sometimes “better” is not always better. This isn’t referring to aesthetics or appearance of the product (that’s an article for another day), this is referring to actual performance and user experience “upgrades”. So to pass this across best, i’ll handle three case studies where better wasn’t quite what it seemed.

1.) iPhone AIRPODS

Now this one in particular has been under a lot of public criticism, mostly under the title of “why do we need this?” and “why does it cost so much?”. Well this take on the AIRPODS isn’t just that the “innovative” move to remove the earphone straps wasn’t unnecessary; it was a bad move. As much as it may have seemed like we’ve spent too much time as a species being constrained to dangling wires on our ears, it turns out it was for a good reason. Majorly because nobody wants to lose their earphones, least of all when they cost $159.00 *coughs*. Those supposed primitive wires helped in keeping them handy, with the wrapping around necks when not in use and other creative ways of keeping them always with you. This feels so obvious, I almost feel silly having to point it out in a medium article. But what’s more silly is this image below:

https://www.spigen.com/products/airpod-strap

So apparently a company was quick to act on this by reversing the innovation and selling it for $ 9.99 *sighs*. They’re selling the exact same thing Apple engineers spent so much time and “ideation” energy trying to remove, and the people are buying it! Bringing cost of the strapped-strapless Airpods to $168.9 (pods+strap). Or you could just buy the normal Strapped-Strapped earphones for $10.00. So what does that tell you about the gross usefulness of the upgrade?

They all saw the wires on earphones as constraints to flexibility of use.

Lesson: Sometimes constraints aren’t such bad things in your design. When studied closely, it may be revealed that they are actually constraining more chaos than freedom. And it takes being careful to tell them apart.

2.) NOISELESS ELECTRIC CARS

One of the “perks” that were advertised to come with the electric\hybrid car revolution was the reduce of noise pollution. So with the exit of the combustion engine, all that noise went with. So cars with no noise, what could go wrong? Think of the time(s) you had that close encounter when crossing the street and almost got hit. Some were less fortunate to have called these events “close encounters”. And these are cars with all the engine noise and tire screeching. Now imagine this same encounter with an 8,000-pound vehicle going at 70mph, but here’s the twist; its silently approaching because it has no engine or all that “useless” noise with it. You get the picture. This thing -noise- that we all assumed to be an absolutely bad thing, apparently has its upsides. And it even plays out well as mostly, this noise is proportional to acceleration and proximity of the car; all the things you need for a last-minute evasive maneuver. Again this is weird because a lot of smart people spent a lot of time in getting these vehicles to be as noiseless as possible, but failed to ever pause and question how bad all this noise actually is, and if they need to completely cancel it.

Once again, a body took action in sight of this new design “flaw”, this time it wasn’t a company seizing the opportunity; it was governments with the interest of pedestrians-mostly the visually impaired and blind in mind. Now it gets even more silly, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration now requires electric/hybrid cars to produce noise when traveling at low speeds. I can’t help but give a quick laugh at that. They require these cars to make a little noise. Again, the same thing they spent a lot of research dollars, intellectual efforts and time trying to remove by optimisations and improvements. This is not exclusive to the US, as other countries such as Japan and China are also regulating(requiring) noise creation in electric vehicles *a big lol to that*.

3.) THE IPAD AIR 2

Yet again our favourite guys-Apple- make it on the list. So what have they done this time again? Well this is more of a personal experience.

So a friend of mine- Teniola, after using an IPAD 4 for a while, finally upgrades to the Ipad Air 2. Why? well, they said they put alot of new stuff in, optimised the display one way or the other,put in some hardware upgrades, but most importantly they made it slicker and lighter, thus suggesting “better”, yes? If you still totally agree with this point of view then I have failed at passing the message across with the first two examples, and you might as well just leave now *double sighs*. Just kidding, maybe this last example will send it home for you.

So back to Teniola’s new iPad “upgrade”. I saw him using a cover(casing) for his light iPad Air 2, and that just looked damn silly to me. Why invest so much in an upgrade where the key improvement is reduction in weight, and then invest further in a piece of accessory that will make it heavy, almost taking you back to where you started? Then he explained that everytime he put his new light iPad in his backpack and got on with the day moving from place to place, at frequent intervals, he would have to pause and put down his bag just to confirm the iPad was still there. Why this paranoia? Well, beyond the fact that it cost a lot, the iPad was so light, he could hardly confirm it was there by trying to feel the weight of his bag, something he was able to do with his old heavier (worse?) iPad 4.

The iPad 4 at the time of writing costs about $230 and the iPad Air 2 about $430 dollars, so a $200 price difference for a lighter (better?) build, only to then spend and extra $60 on a case because it wasn’t heavy enough for you to confirm something substantial was in your backpack. That’s $260 extra you spent because you thought lighter was better.

Now this last example isn’t for the deisgners of the product, I mean, light is generally better, but its for the consumers, that often feel anything new or different is better, without looking into how exactly this current “bad” feature you seek to replace is actually affecting you.

I think personally, I like the last case study best, because it brings an awareness-or at least suggests- that perhaps user experience study should not be a subject explored by creators alone, but also consumers, to better help in their purchasing decisions, and not just jump on the bandwagon of consumerism and eat up every new thing “they”( we 🙂 ) put some glitter on. Do note i am not suggesting ill intentions from the creators, but more of a mismatch in who they are building this new upgrade or product for and who you are.

In conclusion, being a product designer and creator myself I love the process of constant iteration and innovation, so I am not trying to undermine the development and ideation efforts that went into creating these innovations, just asking fellow creators to look twice before you’re in a hurry to push that new update on the repo or remove that “extra button” on the device.

Better Could Mean Worse For Your Product was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Better Could Mean Worse For Your Product

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