The Price of Convenience
by Rachel HinmanA recent post by John Kullman on Mobile Crunch highlights a study that speculates by 2011, 25 million Americans will use their mobile phones as mobile wallets. The report states that the ease and convenience of mobile phone commerce is hard to resist.
While I can appreciate the value of mobile wallets, there is something about this prediction that makes me slightly sad.
In a fast-paced and stressful world, who doesn’t need ease and convenience? It’s seems perfectly natural to want to make life a little easier and more efficient. It’s that desire for efficiency that’s inspired countless products and services like automatic bankteller machines, self-serve gas pumps and the revered Octopus and Oyster cards. I’ve used all these systems and services and yes, they have saved me time and made my life easier.
But lately I have been thinking how the systems and services we design in the name of ease and convenience are actually coming at a steep price.
It’s said that people are defined by their relationships to others. Given that, it’s probably easy for most of us to make a laundry list of all the important people in our lives. If one unpacks all the moments of interaction with human beings on any given day, it’s clear a good share of our time is spent reinforcing those important, explicit relationships – a phone call to the parents, conversations with work colleagues, dinner and drinks with friends and family.
The thing is, there are tons of tiny interactions we have throughout the day with people we hardly know – a conversation about organic produce with a clerk at the grocery store, commiserating with folks standing in line at the DMV, a wink from the bus driver while fumbling for bus fare. Somehow those interactions while seemingly less important, have significance in our lives.
They’re important because they give a richness and texture to our daily experience. They add an element of unpredictability and surprise to our lives. They provide us with opportunity to practice skills like striking up a conversation, thinking on our feet, joking, and flirting. Most importantly, I believe the cumulative effect of these interactions feed into the holy grail of human needs – the need to feel connected to the world around us and be part of something bigger than ourselves.
As we clamor to create systems and services like mobile wallets that streamline our lives and make things easier, unbeknownst to us, we’re actually slowly eliminating the opportunity for these types of tacit interactions to occur.
I’m not suggesting that we abolish convenience and efficiency as design principles because that seems crazy. The momentum of the modern world won’t allow it. However, if we simply approach design problems from a task/goal/efficiency perspective, we lose the opportunity to create systems that honor our need for these tacit human interactions and leave in our wake a society of people who enjoy convenience yet feel lonely and disconnected.
How do we change that trajectory? I’m not exactly sure. However, it seems like an interesting place to start would be to think about how mobile technology can “grease the skids” of social interactions. Instead of placing a premium on the accomplishment of a task or a goal, privilege mobile systems that enable the subtlety, elegance and grace of tacit human interaction.
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June 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Your post goes is a nice complement to this article in The Atlantic.
To your point, if I think about the number of positive interactions I’ve had with people in retail situations vs the negative, negative wins by a wide margin — anything that can lessen those negative situations is a welcome change in my book.
I don’t think technological shift towards speed and efficiency necessarily means that the texture of your daily life goes away, it just changes. Those tacit interactions may come from new and exciting places.
Maybe greasing the skids includes those same mobile phones that saved us hours in the DMV giving us the time to develop a sense of discovery and encourage serendipitous interactions between people with truly shared interests who may have never crossed paths without these tools.
We’re living in exciting times.
June 12th, 2008 at 12:29 am
At times the more efficient ways to handle routines actually translate not only to doing more, but being able to do more that you like to do. To talking with friends, reading, gaming, etc.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Don’t worry, all the social interaction will still be happening when all of our advanced (and very complicated) technological contraptions will start to break down.
Moaning about broken technology will become the #1 Social Lubricant
June 12th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Rich relationships, and expanding the opportunities for rich relationships is what it’s all about. And spontaneous interaction does add texture and a feeling of connectedness. Technology is putting pressure on relationships of all kinds. In some ways, new tech helps support primary relationships in ways that match us anthropologically–it’s easy to once again to be in better, more constant contact with our tribes (except now we don’t have to live within earshot of everyone we know, just within reach of the net).
Tertiary relationships–those interactions with other humans that substitute the awesome power of a human cognitive system to accomplish a simple transaction–are under attack. There’s no need for a human to collect dollar bills at a toll crossing when cars can be marked with an active RFID and drive past to be billed automatically. Nobody needs to stand and pump my gas or collect my money in advance, or swipe my card. I can do all that myself quicker. Technology is freeing people from the monotony of simple transactions. If at the cost of a few spontaneous transactions, I say welcome!
Where the action is in the secondary relationships…like commenting on your blog. This kind of relationship, where there can be a give and take between us both is the place where the spontaneity and delight and texture come from. Naturally technology will continue to pressure the relationships that are more transactional in nature to make them fully automated, and those that are not will be our opportunities to form new primary relationships.
June 12th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Sometimes its just a matter of moving people - the Octopus card does a wonderful job of getting people moving in a busy city - any lesser alternative would probably result in a quiet revolution in Hong Kong
This is of course a city where moving fast is almost a part of every day life at both macro and micro levels.
rgds,
Dan
June 12th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Rachel,
I’ve just found another article that might enhance this discussion a little bit further by expanding the point of concern you stated here: convenience is not only hampering those unique opportunities of human interaction one might find in even the smallest of tasks, but also is diminishing the opportunities in which companies can interact with their costumer.
And I am not thinking utility here, I am thinking how those touch points between a costumer and a company help tweak and improve the benefits experienced by a costumer in the use of a certain product or service.
Hugs from Buenos Aires,
Mario Santoyo
Does your technology engage? (Source Gallup) http://tinyurl.com/5697be
June 13th, 2008 at 7:26 am
No doubt technology can act as an insulator. TV and A/C have obviously killed the local cafe — of course people used to leave their hot little flats and head down to the pub for a pint, but leave American Gladiator on the 50 inch plasma in 68 degree comfort, no way!
Cars, Walkmans, cell phones, iTunes ( I SO miss our local CD store that closed up ), GPS units, easy pay systems… all part of the same trend.
But none of those mean you CAN’T strike up a conversation waiting for the subway, ask someone what they think of their car while filling up, comment on the CD selection at Starbucks while waiting for your misto, etc… Sure, in North America we often shy away from that, but why? Not because we can pay for gas with the swipe of a card.
July 26th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
[...] The price of convenience 这个世界没有天上掉下来的馅饼. 你想要得到的东西, 就要拿另一样来交换. 这些可以是实质性的,如商品,或是空虚的,就象convenience, ease to use, 都必须要有一定的代价来交换. [...]