I love minimalistic design.
I don’t mean just from an aesthetic perspective, but also for functionality, and I don’t think I am alone. I want things to do one simple job and to do it well. This principle can be applied to everything from cars to software to soap dispensers.
What I don’t want is a Wi-Fi-connected oven. I bought a new oven recently, and after installing it, the guy asked me, “Do you need help getting it on the Wi-Fi?”. I burst out laughing. I can’t imagine a world where there is a feature I would want out of an oven that would require Wi-Fi. Here is a list of what I assume are some of the features of a Wi-Fi-enabled oven:
- Automatically keeping the clock up-to-date in the case of a power outage
- Turn on the oven remotely
- Confirm that the oven is turned off when I’m not home
- Watching the food cook remotely (yes, I couldn’t believe it either, but there is a little camera in the oven for this purpose)
These things are at best very trivial improvements over the standard oven experience. It takes near zero effort to reset the clock. The other “features” are something I straight up don’t need. Why would I need to start the oven remotely? The food I want to eat is inside of it!
All of these trivial features likely required teams or even entire departments of people to engineer. I can’t help but constantly wonder how much money I could have saved if they just built a regular old oven. They require additional dependencies, in this case, an internet connection. Those dependencies can fail, which sometimes disables the trivial features, but it can also impact the main task the product was built for. They can also rely on additional physical components including sensors, which increase complexity, and with it, the likelihood that something breaks.
I find this issue is especially true with cars. I would absolutely love to buy a new car with no extra fancy features. No touch screens with poorly designed UIs. No fancy key fob which is somehow less secure than a regular old key. Increase the markup, I don’t care, I think we would both be saving a ton of time, money, and resources.
I’d like to think many people agree with me, but I just don’t know. The rise of smart devices doesn’t seem to be slowing down. I was stopped in my tracks on a recent trip to the hardware store when I saw that they were selling voice-activated faucets for $875. An acquaintance of mine gets a notification on his phone when his coffee mug detects that the coffee is at the optimal drinking temperature. So much needless complexity for such minimal benefit. I think the cost outweighs the gain.