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Designing People's Experiences for Mundane Tasks: Needed, or Contrived?
The Vaaka coffee and tea scale
When I was at ID school in the early '90s, they taught us "No one wants a toaster. What people want is toast."
The times have definitely changed, if the success of this Vaaka device is any indication. It's an analog scale designed to provide "a meditative exploration of the balance between coffee and life."
It adds several steps to your coffeemaking process, I suppose to deliver a "curated" exercise in tactility. Here's how you're meant to use it:
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To paraphrase Mitch Hedberg, I don't need another step between me and coffee. But I am not the target market. This project has been successfully Kickstarted, and to me it suggests people enjoy experiencing rituals with objects, and/or they're craving tactility, the manipulation of tools to achieve an aim. Which makes sense to me, given the digital nature of modern life.
That being the case, I can't criticize the object directly. I think of objects like this not as a symptom of an ailing society, but as the antibodies that show up to reveal that there is an unseen ailment.
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If you are already using a scale (and a scoop) to make your coffee, this doesn't really add any steps, it actually removes one (or two) and a screen / buttons.
I’d like to see these design thoughts. We are human with various emotion, instead of a task machine. In this way, I really want some 'Contrived' things to make me feel I am a human.
The anti-digital movement has people reverting back to vinyl records. And, I listen to the great New Orleans radio station WWOZ - wwoz.org - and they recently had their fundraiser, which featured a boombox, and, would you believe it that you can now record cassettes, directly off the radio?! Maybe that electronic player gadget thingy that you use, too, just in case you can buy cassettes and know somebody with a cassette player so you can share. https://wwoz.org/member-thank-you-gifts
Much like esoteric runway fashion that is wildly impractical, or concept cars that have no engine, I think objects like this can lead to new ideas in style while retaining usability. With this example, balance beam scales can be incredibly accurate for very little cost in comparison to digital scales; bringing them back into common use would be a good thing.