Most of us have used technology our entire lives. I rely on technology more than most people: a large part of what I do for a living has to do with technology. One thing that kind of hit me today as I was about to admit defeat to my Bluetooth headphones is that technology–how to put it eloquently–simply sucks.

It’s amazing how used we’ve gotten to many quirks that all sorts of devices (and particularly software) have been forcing us to live with. It’s not specific to a single technology company, or even a particular device/application type. For example, here is an excerpt of what I had to deal with just today (granted, today was especially bad, as you will see, but most of us go through similar experiences without ever noticing all the badness):

• The clock in my room that’s supposed to adjust automatically based on Daylight Saving Time decided it should adjust the time again today. It’s ironic that the clock that’s supposed to be more accurate is actually much less reliable than a small travel clock that I bought fifteen years ago
• I tried downloading new podcasts on my iPhone so I could listen to them later in the gym–this is an example of a use case where the iPhone 3G is particularly unresponsive and frustrating. After I selected a few podcasts for download and went back to the iPod screen, a screen would appear and not allow any user input for something like 7 seconds. 7 seconds!
• I connected my Bluetooth headphones to my iPhone. First, some times the Bluetooth refuses to work once the iPhone screen saver kicks in so I had to restart my iPhone (I don’t mean to harp on Apple products, but, unfortunately I am perceiving a significant decline in stability and quality of Apple technologies in the past few years… it all seems to have started with the iPhone. This sucks because this was precisely the reason I switched to Apple after many years of stuff that simply didn’t work)
• Then the Bluetooth headphones themselves gained a life of their own and started lowering the volume. I was unable to turn it up again
• The treadmill stopped working displaying some cryptic number on the LCD after just 15 minutes of use. I had to power cycle it
• Internet Explore, which I use at work, froze up for five seconds in gmail.
• I had to press the remote that controls my garage door three times before the door opened

The examples are countless (I encourage you to make a list once just to get an idea of how much badness surrounds us).

I don’t think it’s acceptable. This is not how I envisioned technology. I envisioned technology that’s seamless, natural

We’re still far away from that ideal state–but it’s not surprising: given how technology builds on itself, the multitude of possible inputs (there are orders of magnitude more inputs that technology has to deal with than, say, a pen or even a lightbulb), and its relatively young age, technology is more like a toddler than anything else. Hopefully today’s technology will feel to our grandchildren the same way “health care” of the late nineteenth century feels to us.

In the meantime, for God’s sake, let’s fix the big problems. I feel like there are some inviolable rules that technology should adopt, that reflect the “natural” user experience. It’s unacceptable for a UI screen to “freeze” for 7 seconds, for example. Similarly, technology should give me easily digestible, informative feedback if anything takes longer than expected or is wrong. If I drag a corrupted file onto the main iTunes window, nothing happens. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t held the file over the window for long enough so that the window could gain focus, or because there is something wrong with iTunes, or because there is something wrong with the file. Finally, technology should be forgivable, robust and stable. I should have an option to try a new but possibly unstable piece of technology (currently it feels more like I am forced to use unstable technology). Software companies currently do this, but, to be brutally honest, most software out there feels like it’s in beta stage. Finally, technology should ensure that the common use cases will always (or, as close to “always” as possible) work. If I use a stapler, I’m pretty confident it will staple my stack of papers. If I turn on Apple TV, I’m never sure if it’ll be able to see the movies on my network drive.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 01:32 and is filed under The Daily Badness, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.