Products Are People Too
Images from Mr Jones Watches; the Mantra.
Oh, but I’m talking about ideas in product design.
Cosmicomics doesn’t really say anything about being human though, not directly.
But my reaction – our reaction – to the appearance of the Moon does say something about being human. The Moon-shot is the biggest goal we can have. What humans have is ambition. Great, often unattainable, overwhelming ambition.
To be honest, I’m a lot happier talking to people if I know their motives or ambition. If someone knocks on my front door, it’s important for me to know if they’re trying to sell me something.
I wonder whether we’d be happier with products if we knew they had some goal, some “I want to go to the moon” kind of goal. We might not understand why they had that goal, but maybe if we understood their overall motivation, we wouldn’t be so annoyed when it didn’t do exactly what we wanted. What if my wristwatch had aspirations which were above and beyond the purpose for which it was manufactured? Would that lead to a different kind of respect?
What if watch’s motivation was to make people comfortable with time? maybe, the more i lifted it up, the more it could fade out. I don’t know, that’s a rubbish idea.
But these watches, by the designer Crispin Jones, do have such motivations. He’s produced a series.
This particular model, the Mantra, has a window in it which displays a statement. There’s a different one every hour.
‘The Mantra seeks to either boost your confidence or undermine it – the hour is indicated by an aperture which reveals either a positive or a negative statement. Over time you may learn to avoid looking at your watch at certain times of the day!’
Nice. You probably can’t read these one. The one on the left says ‘the future is good.’ The one on the right says ‘lose your dreams.’
Okay, products with motives. It sounds spurious, but I think it’s actually really solid. When we deal with other people, we have a little model of them in our head that lets us anticipate their needs and responses. It helps us anticipate what they’ll do in any given circumstance. It builds trust.
We’re comfortable with this, because it lets us exchange meaning much more efficiently, and we’re less likely to be surprised. Knowing ‘where someone is coming from’ makes us much more comfortable with someone. If I’m in a business meeting, I’m always happier to know why everyone in the room wants this to happen.
So high level motivations are important for our internal model of the ‘other’.
Actually, for web applications, advertising serves this pretty well. We know the overall motivation of sites is to make money, and that lets us model them in our heads pretty well.
I think we need to design in ambition and the display of ambition into our products.