Did you ever look at the technology around you? Have you ever thought about how it looks and why it looks like that? We all know that design trends change from year to year, from decade to decade. How did technology change visually from before the 21st century?
I think the main difference came from how the users and manufactures look at the tech products they use and manufacture. Electronic utilities such as phones, televisions, amplifiers, laptops, and others are treated as common commodities nowadays and their existence in one's household is rarely surprising. Given the proliferation of such equipment, it's use has become completely normalized and so has it's design.
Technology before was treated as such, both by it's users and manufacturers. It was not a necessity in life, rather a luxury. That severely affects the design of such products because the market to which it's sold to has drastically shifted. The design has moved from being oriented around customization to being oriented around safety. Since you want as many people as possible to use your product, you need to adapt it's interfaces to be usable by as many people as possible. Such practices pretty much focus solely on the accessibility of the interface to the lowest common denominator, relegating any complexity to increasingly rare enthusiast product lines. Some may argue that it's just how capitalism works, and they would not be wrong. There's no changing that without changing the underlying system our society relies on today. This article is mostly there to raise awareness of this phenomenon.
We as a society need to start treating technology as technology again. There is no need to hide the terminal logs during an OS install, there is no need to put a fancy, app-based frontend over every product sold nowadays, there is no need to keep everything in the cloud just so the manufacturer can have total control over the user experience. All of those things are already happening in the background, and forcing users to be ignorant of it doesn't help anyone. Accessibility is good and should be encouraged, but it shouldn't be the main driving force behind the design of product interfaces. Look at the technology around you and think about how customizable it is. Limiting customization limits users from learning about the technology they're using and prevents them from experimenting. Of course, it also prevents advanced users from tailoring products to their needs. It is just an overall loss for everyone just for the sake of agressively minimizing user error. I'm sure I don't need to make an argument about the longetivity and repairability of the modern electronic product. Bottom line is, people are going to hurt themselves either way. You can put in security measures, but trying to completely lock out users for their own safety is a fruitless task which hurts everyone in the long term.
I think this shift in design has also been reflected visually. Technology of the yesterday looked sharp, serious and even intimidating in a way. It would be something you would look at with admiration and respect, a serious piece of art and engineering perfectly fused for your enjoyment. In contrast, we want the product of today to be comforting and to inspire feelings of joy in the user. Take a look at the personification of the Windows operating system and many virtual assistant products, for example. What is the benefit of trying to pretend something is something which it isn't? Think about how complex is the technology you use every day and tell me it is not something to be admired. Given how important art is for the human psyche, I don't see what is there to gain from stripping all of the personality and beauty from a product and distilling it down to something with a sole purpose of being easy to use for absolutely everyone. Embrace the complexity because it is the order in this chaotic universe.
12.08.2022.
