The Future of Design
Aaron Shapiro wrote an interesting bit of prognostication about the future of digital design in “The Next Big Thing in Design? Less Choice.” He argues that while contemporary design primarily aims to simplify the information and options presented to us so that we can better make our own choices about the products and services we purchase and use, tomorrow’s designers will instead aim to eliminate the need for us to make any choice at all. This will be possible because the amount of personal information available to our apps will be so vast and diverse that our apps will be able to very accurately predict our needs and preferences without our intervention.
On the one hand, I concur that many products are already leading us down this road. As Mr. Shapiro points out, Google Now is already doing this to the extent it is possible, and the result is certainly intriguing. Imagining how beneficial this could be is rather easy. I no longer need to set alerts, because my apps already know everything I plan or probably want to do. And, because they know where I am, where my future activities will occur, what mode of transportation I usually take, and every other preference and data point in my life, my apps can do a bunch of funky math and let me know whenever I need to know about something I need to do.
In short, it’s sort of like having a personal scheduler that manages your life for you, and if you ask any very busy and probably important individual, having this kind of always-with-you assistance is not only incredibly helpful, but may also be absolutely critical. A person can only do so much, right? And with the documented phenomenon of “decision fatigue” that Mr. Shapiro also notes, it seems like a very noble goal to create apps for Joe and Jane Average that can bring the same life-changing benefits.
On the other hand, I see three big reasons to think that this sort of “anticipatory design” is not the next big thing in design, even though it may become a design detour for a time.
First of all, there is a logical insidiousness to the whole idea, and people tend to avoid anything that smells insidious. Design, unlike art, is distinguished by its service to a business objective. Today we are making products more user friendly and delightful because it is proven to translate into an increased profit for the product owner. For this kind of anticipatory design to gain acceptance, it too must prove an equal or greater benefit.
Unfortunately, the only way this kind of product could do that would be to use all the personalized information to further market to us. While many products today do just that and, however much we may talk about privacy worries we continue to accept this kind of targeted marketing, the degree to which anticipatory design would begin to eliminate our direct involvement in decisionmaking seems to step over the line of acceptable invasion of privacy and into the realm of marketers making our decisions for us. And that is pretty insidious.
Second, despite the theoretical benefits we might gain from having all our decisions made for us, the drawbacks are tremendous. Even small erroneous guesses by our apps could prove disastrous or at least very problematic in more ways than I can count. Even if 99.9% of these decisions are good for us, or at least not troublesome, all that benefit can be wiped out by a single bad decision. Sure, there are ways to try to alleviate these situations through thoughtful design, but still, do I want to arrive late for an important interview because my app’s guess was not good enough?
Third, while not having to interact with a product to make choices sounds dreamy, it means we would forego the designed experiences we enjoy today. Mr. Shapiro addresses this point directly, stating that the “beautifully designed experiences we rely on to make these decisions has distracted us from our original goal of simplifying our lives.” I certainly agree that we all suffer to some degree from digital experience fetishism, but do we really want to gain as much efficiency as possible in exchange for having no experience at all? As with many things, what we imagine would be great may not actually be what we gain the most satisfaction from.
For example, I like to drive on back roads solely for the pleasurable experience, not because it makes my life simpler. I’d get to my destination much faster on the highway, but would my life be better for it? For the most part, no. Barring an emergency, I don’t mind the extra time, because in return for that I receive far more enjoyment, and not just in the moment. Years later I will still recall that drive down a particular beautiful road, and I will again feel some of that initial pleasure. The highway drive will, hopefully, be forgotten as soon as possible.
I believe that the focus on creating great experiences is not a step in some design ladder where we will abandon the last thing and adopt a new one. On the contrary, I believe design remains fundamentally the same: it is all about crafting an experience that will make the utility of the product as pleasant as possible, thereby increasing its perceived utility. Aesthetic trends may come and go, of course, but the underlying purpose and focus of design will remain. The next big thing in this sense is really just an increased understanding of how to create even more rewarding experiences that benefit both the product user and owner.
That greater understanding is happening right now, and *this* is where Mr. Shapiro’s original hypothesis about less choice makes sense. Designing products where the information and options we receive are more limited and personalized is a very powerful ingredient in even better experiences. This is why Yahoo! Digest — one of the first news apps to deliver only a few curated stories twice a day to your smartphone, rather than letting you receive countless stories alll day long — became so popular. Information overload, begone! And many other apps have taken up the drumbeat and done the same, opting for very curated or narrow information or feature sets in order to deliver a better experience.
Less choice will most certainly play an increasingly important role in design, but I do not believe that will lead us to doing without the interface at all and letting our apps make our decisions for us, no matter what the corporate product marketers want. We will never cede complete control to our apps, even if we are promised that they will use all our personal information just to benefit us. We’re not that trusting, and in return for some increase in efficiency, we lose all the joy of a great user experience.
I applaud Mr. Shapiro’s efforts to cast his gaze into the future of design in order to help us all prepare for tomorrow, and in many ways what he has seen is not only interesting, but useful to think about. However, as Google Glass has proven, the experience matters. A lot. And any soothsayer that suggests we will all be happier to gain a few minutes each day of our lives in return for not having to interact with our devices and apps might want to give some serious thought to how we actually live our lives now. How many minutes each day do we waste doing absolutely nothing of importance? How many things do we tell ourselves we are going to do each day that don’t get done, even though we really did have the time and the means?
Of course. I could be wrong.
