Feature Overload--Why Consumer Electronics Are So Complicated
If you have a smart phone, there's a good chance that it lives in your pocket. And if you regularly use the internet on your phone, chances are that you've felt inundated with too many options and features to keep track of. For example, let's say that you want to browse the internet using your phone for entertainment purposes. There are dozens of ways for you to do this without downloading any specific apps--and all of them come with some level of complication and annoyance attached.
So, as with any consumer good, the existence of smart phones has led to an incomprehensible proliferation of choice. But why? Why are we faced with so many options when it comes to consumer electronics? What purpose do they serve? This essay will explore the nature of consumer electronics and explain why they have become so complicated in the first place.
The History of Consumer Electronics
Consumer electronics are the latest addition to the toolbox that humans have developed over our time on Earth. As we know, humans originally had developed tools that were used for hunting and other basic survival tasks. After humans decided to settle down and become farmers, they began making even more tools to assist them in the tasks of agriculture. This trend continued until now, when we have a plethora of tools that seem to be doing nothing but complicating our lives. So what's going on here?
How many of the gadgets in your house do you actually use on a consistent basis? I would venture that the answer is "not very many." In fact, some devices such as printers and microwave ovens are so ubiquitous that we almost take them for granted. However, because of their ubiquity and inescapability, we have made these devices incredibly complicated and inconvenient to operate.
Examples of this abound. Take your microwave oven for example--does anyone really know how to use it? We may not really care if we don't know how to use it, but the effects of the lack thereof are undeniably apparent. I have had many a meal ruined by my microwave oven not actually cooking the food that I was expecting--I can at times hear some sort of strange beeping sound and then I end up with an extremely runny food that is often difficult to digest. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone through my microwave oven and had to go through a long and complex series of steps in order for it to actually work.
This is just an example of one of countless complications that plague the device. The countless different calibration settings, the various buttons, the various cycles that must be repeated--it's all a painstakingly long process when you are in a hurry.
Why are these devices complicated? The answer is quite simple: they are complicated because we need them to be complex. In the grand scheme of things, we don't really need overly complicated technological devices--an easy-to-use device that does what it needs to do would be sufficient enough for us. However, companies have realized that there is a market for these complicated devices. And because of this, the companies develop these devices in such a way to maximize the amount of confusion and inconvenience that the end user may feel.
This phenomenon is called "feature overload." Feature overload occurs when a company adds unnecessary features to a product in order to sell more units--this can be seen when you look at any smart phone or tablet on the market. Features such as applications, cameras, and internet access are commonplace in smart phones--and they're not necessary at all for typical day-to-day use. They add unnecessary complications to how the device is used, therefore making it harder to operate and thus increasing the sales of the product.
But what are these unnecessary complexities that cause us so much trouble every day? Let's take a closer look at why consumers must have so many consumer electronics options.
Consumer Electronics are Complicated
Industrialists with a desire for profit realized that their devices would only be useful if they were complicated enough to be difficult to operate. They began creating more and more complicated devices that would benefit them in the long run. Unfortunately, this led to an explosion of complications--and it's not limited to just consumer electronics.
Industrialists could use this to their advantage, because it gave them an advantage over the competition. For example, if one of these companies produced a product that was simple and easy to use, other companies would simply offer a similar product. However, if multiple products were easily confusing and complicated to use, then the industrialists would stand out from the rest. This is how unnecessary complications can benefit a company in the long run.
This idea is obviously not limited to just consumer electronics--it has been used with everything from televisions to computers. And because of this principle, industrialists have flooded our technological devices with various types of needless complications.
In order for a product to be successful, it must be able to fulfill the functions for which it was designed. It's true that there are some products that require additional features in order to be useful, but this is clearly overkill on a substantial basis. And with that being said, what reasonable person would want to pay hundreds of dollars on a smartphone device with unnecessary features? It doesn't make sense--and it doesn't help the industry at all.
In fact, some argue that we cannot truly appreciate certain advancements in technology until these advancements have become overly complicated. While I cannot exactly back this up, I do believe that it is true. Remember when our cell phones used to be so simple? When they first came out, it was just a basic device that could make and receive calls--it had no more features. But now the average person has a smartphone with more features than what most people need! The simple cell phone is actually one of the most successful products in the United States, and this is a product that looks only slightly different from what it did 15 years ago.
What about television technology? We still have the same sets and antennas that we had decades ago--for some reason, inventions and improvements seem to become too complicated when these products are redesigned.
Conclusion
Although consumer electronics are meant to be complicated, they typically become too complicated for their own good. It is interesting how many innovations have been produced and then ultimately discarded--I mean, how many people purchased a smartphone ten years ago that we can no longer use?
Take a look at the iPhone 7. Here is a device that has all of the newest and best features that you can possibly imagine--these include pretty much every technological advancement except touch ID (which was initially implemented in the iPhone 5). Even with all of these options, we are still expected to purchase another product every year and pay hundreds of dollars for it. It's crazy.