GADGETS, with their “planned obsolescence,” promote the impulse to have the latest model with ever more features, including features for clearer selfies. This promotes an almost Freudian “phone envy,” arising from a feeling of missing out on the latest phone. (How big is yours?) Gadget series numbers become status symbols. However, declining sales of new versions coming less than a year apart show a waning appetite for upgrades, or a longer embrace of the status quo.
Can the proliferation of options and features as well as over half a million possible apps overwhelm the consumer? Will the digital illiterate buy a product that makes him feel as intelligent as a ketchup stain?
One way to address the overload of options is to offer the frequently used functions as “default options.” These features are deemed to be what the simpleton will use. Rather than forcing the consumer to go through a thicket of decisions and options, a small set of features are bundled into a default option displayed on the first screen.
This default approach to multiplying choices is also promoted by the combo meals of fast-food chains. The five combinations are numbered, laid out, and accompanied with pictures. This moves the line of customers faster, having only to choose among a few default packages rather than meditating on the infinite combinations of chicken thighs, drinks, noodles, soups, sauces, potato states, and spiciness levels.
Unused features drive up a gadget’s price and profit margin. This mismatch of purpose and cost does not seem to deter purchase by even those who readily admit that they just use their phones to send text messages, make and receive calls, store contact numbers, surf the ’net for news, and check stock prices.
What about asking Siri for the weather forecast or the nearest ATM, using Google Maps to navigate to a restaurant, or demanding a FaceTime call to check the real whereabouts of an untrustworthy mate — she’s in a room with red curtains and many mirrors (we’re teleconferencing, Hon). These features, like jealousy, are seldom activated.
Apps need to be related to what needs to be done. Should they include items needed for an emergency and disaster preparedness? Is a fire extinguisher unused in the last 10 years to be discarded as unused capacity? Here, the default option is to flee the burning building rather than put out the fire by breaking the glass where the extinguisher is stored and only then finding out it no longer works.
Downsizing companies identify the core skills needed to run the business and anything outside that definition is deemed dispensable. Thus, early retirement descends like a plague on people with no longer usable skills. Their precious contacts have all retired.
Job descriptions are the default options. The skills needed only cover routine tasks like signing checks, attending meetings, holding the hand of clients, and delivering the revenue numbers. Not factored into this default setting are such attributes as a sense of perspective, loyalty to the company, strategic thinking, the ability to build consensus, or the willingness to go the extra mile at crunch time — What? There’s an earthquake?
A factoid, which is difficult to believe, holds that we only use 10% of our brain and leave the remaining 90% as unused capacity. This default approach is the premise for the movie Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson as the title character. The unutilized portions in Lucy’s case unleashed by a chemical reaction include the ability to absorb neurological studies and drive fast through the streets of Paris in a few seconds. This premise of limited usage of the brain’s full capacity has been upended by recent studies tracking electric pulses. It seems that we do use all of our brain capacity, only not simultaneously, and not in the same degree.
Default options make gadgets and services more user-friendly. This simplified approach also applies to relationships. The default options for handling disagreements and squabbles are established by a long relationship. They prevent things from getting out of control and resulting in slammed doors and noisy goodbyes. A default mode of changing the topic or just declaring a verbal truce can work — would you please pass the salad dressing, Dear?
Still, lessening choices does not always work. Having only eight candidates for 12 openings seems to accommodate other commitments, and even lends itself to a catchy slogan. However, the default mode, in this case, turned into a zero option.
Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.
