This morning when I woke up, I was greeted by raucous beeping sound, and I had to marvel at this relic of ancient technology: the digital clock radio. It is a digital clock with knobs, buttons, and sliders all over it. It has a snooze button, a radio on button, radio off button, radio frequency dial, radio volume dial, a slider to select alarm, radio alarm, or both, and another slider to select whether you want to set the beep alarm time, radio alarm time, a button for setting the timer forward, one for setting the time back ward, and one for setting the time incrementally forward for precise timing control. Frankly, this is the first time I’ve tried to account for all the little control knobs, buttons, and dials on the thing, but that just goes to show what a marvel of engineering excellence it is. It even has a battery backup so the alarm will function in case of a blackout: wouldn’t want to be late to Armageddon.
I doubt that they make anything like this now because the
trend has been to simplify controls. Instead of ten buttons, why not five? Instead
of dials, why not just use buttons? Instead two buttons that control the
volume, why not just one (you just cycle the volume through the quietest to the
loudest setting until you stop somewhere near where you want)? I hope you are
beginning to see the problem: In our efforts to save construction costs, we
have simplified controllers, or user interfaces, to make them more streamlined,
to use fewer parts, and to minimize costs. While this might save money, the
downside is the user experience is diminished.
For example, I have a Citizen watch that I just love because
it recharges itself using only visible light. I’ve had this watch for 10 years
and never had to wind it or change a batter. It keeps great time and also shows
the date and the day of the week. There’s only one little catch: the single crown
on the watch is its only control function. You pull it all the way out to set
the time, but you pull it halfway out to set the date and day. So far, this
interface is simple enough for us simpletons to use. However, the tricky part
is setting the date and day: If, after pushing the crown delicately into the
halfway position, you turn it clockwise, it increments the day of the week. If
you turn it counterclockwise, it increments the day. Naturally, after any months
that have fewer than 31 days, you must adjust the date. The problem is that
after I successfully finesse the crown into the halfway position, I can never
remember whether to turn it clockwise or counterclockwise for the date. Getting
this setting wrong will increment the day of the week, in which case you must
continue twisting the knob for an hour, cycling through all the days of the week
(in both English and French!) until you return to the correct day. This, to my
mind, is a fairly serious design issue. One would think I should remember over
the course of months which directly to spin the little crown, but that
knowledge somehow escapes me when I need it most. Typically, I would cheat by
slowly turning the knob until I see one of the changes occurring, and if it
starts changing the day, I carefully retract my erroneous decision and start
frantically twisting the crown in the other direction, hoping that the day will
slide gently back into its original position. This is how I broke my watch.
Microsoft is another innovator in removing controls. From
the nineties and the naughties, their interfaces were fairly straightforward –
menus! Lots of menus! If you needed something, you opened up a menu which
cascaded down the screen like a beautiful waterfall of black on grey text. You
then read through all the various controls and found the one that you needed.
Better still, many of the commands included keystroke shortcuts, written
clearly (in parentheses) right next to the command, so we keyboard monkeys
could bypass the menus entirely and use keyboard shortcuts. I am sure that to
the untrained eye, our keyboard forays must have appeared as sinister as black
magic. Slowly, people did catch on and now almost everyone knows control-c,
control-v, etc., at an instinctual level. We don’t even think about it.
However, if we DID need to think about it, in the old days, those menu options
were always there, just awaiting a cautious tap, to reveal themselves to use
once again in their full glory. Not so much anymore.
Now these same controls are lifted away, in a ribbon, hidden
from view. If you open the ribbon, you see hieroglyphics, which, without a Rosetta
Stone, must be painstakingly memorized. Yes, the keyboard shortcuts are still
there, but they were memorized from the days of old when you could still find
their function in a menu somewhere.
Why do software companies hide the controls? It is not to
save on parts or manufacturing costs. It must be for some other reason. They chalk
it up to user experience, but which user are they appealing to? It is not the
end-user.
Adobe recently moved its page navigation from the left side,
where it has been for decades, to the right side of the screen, for no
discernable reason. Maybe they want us to appreciate where it was before
because we were taking it so much for granted. Maybe they want us to realize
how dependent we are on spatial location cues and memorization.
We, as human beings, are gifted with instinctual mental faculties
which we use to navigate the world. One of these is called Object Permanence:
objects remain where you put them until someone or something moves them. It is
something we don’t think about as a human faculty, but we use it all the time
when we are looking for our car keys or are amazed a rabbit being pulled from a
hat. Magic is surprising because it violates are basic concept of object permanence.
Whereas this human capacity has allowed us to navigate through the physical
world rationally, knowing where stuff is, this faculty has been continually
violated by software updates that force us to find our virtual car keys again
and again after they are malevolently hidden by the software developers.
I understand the principle of saving money by reducing or
simplifying controls, but I also see what effects these decisions have in the
long run. By simplifying controls, we place more cognitive burden on the user.
I have a headlight for my bike. The headlight is quite
fancy: it has three brightness settings and flash settings for running during
the day. However, it only has one button. To change the brightness, you must
tap the button twice, then tap the button again for the brightness setting. To
achieve flashing, you must hold the button down and then tap it. One button,
seven settings. I had to hold on to the instruction manual because I do not
want to memorize all the various ways to get what I want by interacting with a
single, unlabeled button.
We are now in, what I would call, the Control Trough.
Imagine a graph with time on the X axis and user-experience on the Y axis.
Older technology had more controls on it, which were usually clearly labeled.
In the future, devices will be “smart” so we can simply tell them what we want
them to do and they will understand what we want and to it. “Computer, set my
headlight for slow flash, one pulse per second,” and it is done! Imagine this
future where your accoutrements are your (only) friends! This is the Star Trek
future. “Computer, make me some espresso, double shot.” Bam! It exists, as if
by magic. So, between the old days where you could get what you want by examining
the object and figuring out the controls, and the bright, glistening future
where you can tell the machine what you want and it figures out how to do it,
we are in the trough, where we have a single button that does everything, and we
must hang on to the instruction manual to know which Morse Code command to send
to the flashlight to turn it on. In this trough, everything seems unnecessarily
difficult.
My wife has a watch that has no buttons. It has no crown, no
knobs, no sliders. It has a screen. The screen is the only interface. You tap
it, and you can one thing. You flip it and you can see the time. It monitors
your heartbeat. It knows when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake.
It seems that the ramp out of this trough is in sight! But
is it the Star Trek future where the machines obey us, or is it some other
future we are hurtling toward? The Stark Tech future?
My wife’s watch nags here to get up and move around. It buzzes
her to get more sleep. Online games now sometimes nag at you to stop playing if
you’ve been on too long. The danger is that as the machines get smart enough to
know what we want, they are also smart enough to think they know better than we
what we need. Instead of obeying us, they are beginning to impose their collective
will upon us. Did I sign up for a watch to tell me what to do? No, I did not.
This is the nightmare future, where instead of controlling
the technology, the technology controls us. We are already seeing the inklings of
such a future, unfolding like a Venus flytrap to ensnare our souls. Technology
will be watching us, monitoring us, and deciding whether we are worthy of their
services.
We have cars that jerk you back into your lane if you start
to slide over. Sounds good, doesn’t it? You fall asleep and the car will stop
you from swerving. But, what if there is an obstruction in the road and you
need to swerve to avoid it? Your friendly and smart car will gently nudge you
back into a horrific collision.
“Computer, make me an espresso!”
“You have already had three espressos today. Having more
will violate our terms of service.”
“Computer, send money to my bank.”
“Your bank has discontinued service with you and donated all
your money to a charity of their choice because of your political beliefs,
which we monitored online. Have a nice day.”
As machines become smarter, and the controls disappear, we
end up being controlled by them, or rather, by the people who designed them.
This is not the future we want or deserve.
So my question to you is which future are we moving toward:
Star Trek or Stark Tech? Which way do the signs currently point? Is it too late
to course-correct to get us back on track for the future we want? Are you the person
who can make it happen? As we climb out of the control trough, let us climb
into a better future. Make it so.
