The dumber, the better
Zhenyi Tan, in a blog post titled Ensheinification, writes:
Every time I replace something with a new thing, the new thing is worse.
My mother-in-law bought a new rice cooker. It has 20 settings and none of them cook good rice. The old one had one button and made perfect rice for 10+ years.
I talked to her about it. She said she tried three different rice cookers. The first one made the rice too sticky. The second one had many buttons and bad design3. And all the buttons turned out to cook the same way. The third was also full of buttons and also made sticky rice. She went back to ask the shop staff how the buttons worked. Nobody knew. They’re just salespeople.
Reading this article, I could almost taste the frustration that I often experience myself when I am in the market for something. The rice cooker is actually a great example of an object that is supposed to do one thing, and do it well.
It turns out that last Christmas, my wife got me something I had on my wish list for a while: you guessed it, a rice cooker. But not any rice cooker: this “analogue”, beautiful, and simple Hario rice cooker. No button. No plug. No screen. No LED indicator. Just a rice cooker that whistles when the rice is about to be ready.
Is it perfect? No. The rice is very good, every time, but I would not call it perfect. But if I prepare the rice the right way, the results are repeatedly and predictably great.
The object itself is well-made too. A nice glass lid, a stainless steel and aluminium body, an easy-to-clean and replaceable whistle part: I think this thing could last decades if I take care of it properly.
This article by Zhenyi Tan also reminded me of Bradley Taunt’s My Coffee Maker Just Makes Coffee post that I have shared a few times already:
Both digital and industrial design suffer from bloat. Far too often I witness fellow designers over-engineer customer requests. Or they add excessive bloat to new product features. It’s almost a rarity these days to find designers who tackle work as single items. Everything expands. Everything needs to do one little extra “cool” thing. Nothing is ever taken away.
My new rice cooker and my dear old coffee maker are great examples of this philosophy applied to everyday objects, and the more I think about it, the more satisfying it gets.*1 As you know, I also love to take away and remove stuff to keep things light and simple.
When my soon-to-be brother-in-law first visited our new flat last year, he asked me about the kind of roller shutters we had installed, if they were electrically operated and if I could activate them remotely. I told him that the real estate developer had stuck to manual levers to keep the cost down as much as possible, but we could, if we wanted, easily add a little motor on the side.
But I told him that I preferred this manual system anyway. If one day I can’t open or close the shutters, I will know where the problem comes from: a mechanical issue with the roller.
If I had a smart system, and if tapping the button on my iPhone screen didn’t do anything, the problem could not only be caused by more things, but also become harder to pinpoint. Is the Wi-Fi working? Do the shutters have internet access?*2 Should I restart the app or my phone? Does my flat have power? Do I need to reset the connection? Is it a bug? Do I have to update the app? Do I need to give the app access to my location? And finally, is there a mechanical issue with the roller?
I get that these modern and more complex solutions exist: some people might prefer them over “dumb” systems, some people may actually need 20+ functions for their rice cooker. But if the price to pay for these is less reliability and simplicity, I wouldn’t count this as progress, but as regression indeed.