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China Tech Gadgets are not my friend
China Tech Gadgets are not my friend | Gadgets are not my friend |
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| China tech | |
| Friday, 27 October 2006 | |
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I remember walking down a street in Shenzhen with lots of electronic stores. Inside the electronic stores there were frequently arrays of MP3 players. These things were quite fat and stubby, they had lots of little buttons and LCD displays. To use them you had learn a hundred million button combinations to access, navigate and play your digital music. I don't like gadgets like these; I may be twenty six but deep inside I'm a grumpy old man. I like my life to be simple. When I switch something on I expect it to work. When I press a button I expect it to play (or cook something or send an email). The one thing I do not like is configuration. The electronic stores in Shenzhen stressed me out. I have never been surrounded by so many gadgets. The young people in China (and Taiwan) have an absolute fascination with buttons, options and colourful lights. I find this quite painful. One thing I like about Apple products is that they assume I am really stupid. They assume I am so stupid that I cannot configure anything, and I don't want many options. Therefore Apple products tend to do all the work for me. I would call this 'usability'. Usability is when you can use something. It's when something has a task (like playing music) and you can basically just hit a random button to get it working. You don't need to think about how it works. You don't need to know why it works. You just hit the play button and get on with your life. I'm not sure if the youthful obsession with gadgets in Asia is different from the youthful obsession with gadgets in Europe. I figure young people are relative alike no matter where you go. However, one thing concerns me a little about the bigger picture. The decision-making and interaction process in China appears to be just as complex as those darn MP3 players. Accountability, transparency and simplicity is quite difficult to unearth. I've begun to wonder if there is a cultural difference between certain Asian countries and certain European countries with regards causality. In countries like the UK people tend to like Action A to lead to Result B. In China it appears Action A is frequently linked to Sub-Decision B which in turn is linked with Secret-Decision C and depends on the result of Untraceable-Committee D before Result E can be revealed. Murky causality also exists in Europe. Don't get me wrong. But I've never encountered quite so much as in Taiwan, China or Japan. Is it possible that we really are looking at a social difference? I think it's important to consider these things from a technology perspective because it helps inform us about what will appear in the future. It informs design, marketing and market dynamics. Remember I said we need to talk about the big picture? Roll with that and step out-wards. Technology is part of society. Effective technology will integrate with the society in which it dwells. Therefore, effective technology will be a reflection of the underlying social values of the society where it is deployed. Zoom back in again. This means that it's possible that the MP3 player that will be a hit in China will be inherently different from the MP3 player that a grumpy Northern European will use. Hm. Social ergonomics. I'm worried we're not looking at these things effectively enough at the moment. We're still stuck in the Henry Ford 'everything for the masses through mass production' mentality. Our multinationals are increasingly trying to make one product for the entire world. In effect, we're seeing an attempt to make the entire world live in the same way. I think that's a dumb idea. The entire world does not live in the same physical or social environment. If you make tools designed for one environment (say, North America) then you're not going to be able to use them effectively in other (say Tibet). We're loosing effectiveness percentage points here and that's just wasteful. |
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