Core77

Yea or Nay? A Hands-Free System for Smartphones and Tablets

The thing about going to hell in a handbasket is that someone has to design the handbasket

By Rain Noe - January 7, 2016

in Object Culture | Crowdfunding

In recent news, a California man staring into his phone accidentally walked over the edge of a cliff and fell to his death. A week later, a woman in China staring into her phone fell into a canal and drowned. There is also a disturbing video making the rounds on social media that's a supercut of people staring into their phones, walking directly into speeding traffic and being violently run over.

That people stare into their phones and devices and stop paying attention to their immediate surroundings is not in question. Neither is the fact that they will continue to do it. The genie's out of the bottle. So my question to you is, should people design objects to fulfill unmet needs in these device-starer's lives? That's what I thought when I came across this Kickstarter:

Enter a caption (optional)

To be clear, I think this product is horrific. (And at press time would-be backers seemed to agree, with just $424 pledged on a $2,500 goal with 35 days to go.) Perhaps I'm clumsier than most of you, but if you've ever fallen down a flight of stairs while carrying something—raise your hand, don't be ashamed, no one can see you—you know that you don't want that thing you're carrying attached to your neck by what appears to be a garrote.

But those are my personal biases. There's no question that this device solves some kind of ergonomic issue for device-starers, no matter how ridiculous it looks. And as difficult as it is for me to imagine, there are probably some folks that want to walk around a library—a library—while yapping on their phone and having a book float in front of them. So the question is, ought we design devices that suits people's behavior, even if we consider that behavior asinine? Is it our job as designers to steer things towards our own personal ideals, or are we merely here to serve and produce?

o

Favorite This
Q
4

Comment

Comments

Bobtato Smith

8 years ago

Z

1Z

Reply

People like to reduce design to cute little stories, like the one about paving the cowpaths, or (with the opposite lesson) the one about how if Henry Ford asked his customers what they wanted they'd have said "a faster horse". Underneath those stories, the point is that good design answers the right question, whether or not it's the one your client originally asked.
If the question is "how do I hold my iPad in front of my face while I'm walking", I think a good designer would spot that this brief already has bad design choices baked in: it assumes that only the iPad part is important, and not the walking part. How about a messaging app that uses the camera and GPS to flash a red background if you're about to walk into danger? What about putting the screen on a wheeled stand? Or projecting a screen onto the ground in front of you? I don't really get the use case, so I don't know the right answer, but I know designers shouldn't be applauded for creating obvious problems.
The whole point of having experts, in design or law or surgery or whatever, is that they're supposed to know better than their clients. And if clients don't like being told what to do, they're free to ignore their doctor, lawyer or designer.

!Report as spam
Olivia Sementsova

7 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Big Nay, what a horrible and awkward device.

!Report as spam
Steffi Burra

8 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

I don't see how this will help people from falling off cliffs or getting run over by cars, I mean, your still going to be staring at your screen whether or not you have this device. But who knows, I'm not the one to judge if you should buy it or not, but so far my two hands have worked just fine for me!

!Report as spam
Shaun Mosley

8 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

Great read! I've been debating this same topic for a while now. It's this whole issue of "designing to persuade or enable?". The example I've often used has been referring to Wall-E and the hover chairs people used. If not careful, tomorrows products could lead us from products being intuitive down to everything being dumbed down to a point of being counterproductive.

This is a complex situation and it comes down to our decisions as designers on what impact we want to have. Riding that line of "persuade or enable" is a hard one, but is one of the responsibilities of a good designer.

!Report as spam