Original link: https://limboy.me/posts/the-price-of-convenience/
When we want to accomplish a certain task through tools, convenient products are always easier to be the priority, because we don’t want to spend time to understand the implementation principle and be familiar with the operation. Merchants naturally know this, so when designing products, “whether it is more convenient than other products” is also a very important consideration and selling point. Instant coffee is more convenient than hand-ground coffee; a fully automatic washing machine is more convenient than a semi-automatic washing machine.
To achieve the same goal, a handy tool would have a greater advantage. Those inconvenient tools/behaviors may even disappear, such as the once popular BP machine, which is now gone.
For consumers, when the functions, prices, aesthetics and other aspects meet the needs, they usually choose the more convenient one. But when there are more and more conveniences/services, we seem to lose something.
After a few simple operations on the takeaway app, a cup of coffee is in hand. You can’t see the coffee beans and the powder after the coffee beans are ground, and you can’t smell the unique smell of coffee powder in the air, as if it appeared out of thin air.
After being domesticated by convenience, our bodies will also look for more energy-saving and more convenient behaviors. Climbing the mountain is tiring, but taking the cable car is very convenient; going to the vegetable market is tiring, but ordering food on the app is very convenient; cycling is tiring, but driving is very convenient.
The pursuit of convenience often means skipping the process and enjoying the result directly. The easily obtained results are usually difficult to be valued, and the skipped process also weakens the sense of connection with the goal. I began to understand why my parents like to grow vegetables. Although the end result is to eat potatoes, the potatoes I grow are connected to myself. Fertilize, weed, watch them grow leaves, grow day by day, and turn into a green piece after a few months, pull them out of the ground, rub the soil, and store them in bags. It seems that the result of eating potatoes is not the most important thing, but the process is more attractive.
Inconvenience is not always something to overcome, sometimes the inconvenience itself is the answer. But it is also impossible for us to abandon the convenient tools and return to the primitive state. So how should we grasp this degree? I think it can be considered from the two points of risk and side effects.
risk
The risk is that for some reason, the tool doesn’t work anymore, or works in a way that you don’t expect, and there’s no way to get it back.
“No longer working” usually appears in hardware products. For example, if the hard disk falls during use, the content will be lost and the hard disk cannot be used. Then it is necessary to evaluate the possibility of falling during use, the possibility of being unable to use and repair after falling, and your own acceptance of content loss.
“Working in a way that deviates from what you expect” is usually because there is a dependency, and changes to that dependency will affect the product itself. For example, a third-party Twitter app is often used, but one day Twitter adjusted the API fee or made these third-party apps unavailable through other means, so you were also affected. If you go back to the official Twitter App, the product may be adjusted one day. For example, only blue-label users can use it normally. You don’t want to spend money to subscribe to this service, but you usually use Twitter a lot, and then you will encounter difficulties.
From a programming perspective, this is the difference between reference (reference) and copy (copy). Reference is like a bank card. If you want to withdraw money, you need to go through the bank. If the bank freezes this account one day, your money will be withdrawn. not coming out. Copy is like banknotes. The 10,000 yuan you hide under the floor can be used at any time as long as you want to use it. No matter how the bank’s strategy is adjusted, the money will not disappear out of thin air. In the field of notes, Notion is a reference. All data is stored in the cloud and requires a network to be used normally. There are three dependencies here: Notion’s server, network, and Notion’s iterative update. Because it uses web technology, as long as Notion makes adjustments to the page, you can only use the adjusted page. If this adjustment removes a function that you are very dependent on, you can only complain and adapt after a few sentences. In contrast, local first note-taking tools such as logseq/obsidian do not have these dependencies. If you don’t like changes in a certain version, you don’t need to upgrade, and the data will not be inaccessible if it is stored locally.
If reference dependence is unavoidable, the possibility of it deviating from expected changes can be considered from two aspects. One is the business model and the other is the historical behavior. Try to choose products/services with a simple and clear business model. For example, Spotify’s business model is that the free version has ads, and the paid version has no ads, high bit rate, and can be offline. This is its core, and product iterations will revolve around this core. Costco charges a membership fee every year, and then provides members with low-price and high-quality goods. After understanding the business model, we will have a better understanding when we purchase products/services. In addition, it also depends on whether the company’s strategy and business model will change frequently, which needs to be viewed in combination with historical behavior. If the changes are frequent, you should pay attention. It is possible that the functions you like now may not be available or weakened due to strategic adjustments or business model changes.
side effect
Compared with hardware, apps are more prone to side effects, especially those products with multiple functions and unclear usage scenarios. They are often cheap or free. In order to maintain profitability, advertisements are usually inserted, and advertisements require a large number of users and high daily activities. Therefore, more consideration will be given to this direction when designing products, and some private data will even be stolen. .
Apps are also easy to magnify people’s desires. Once upon a time, after buying a tape, you could listen to it over and over for a long time. Now with Spotify and Apple Music, a large number of songs are at your fingertips. We keep switching between various recommended lists, but there are fewer The original sense of ownership and cherished mentality.
Effects on the body
If you use a certain app heavily every day, it may lead to irregular work and rest, and even vision loss. Because convenience will increase the frequency of using it, and activities such as walking and exercising are easily defeated due to lack of convenience.
Effects on the mind
Some apps will increase the stickiness of the product through the recommendation system or convenient operation, which may have a subtle negative impact on the mind without knowing it. A typical symptom is difficulty concentrating for long periods of time.
sense of connection with purpose
Takeaway allows us to enjoy food quickly and conveniently, and also weakens our sense of connection with food; the house provides a closed space, which also isolates our sense of connection with nature; e-books do not take up space and are easy to obtain, but the price is lost The texture of a physical book. Living in the city, we often have no choice. If possible, we can consider products that balance convenience and connection.
One last thought: Is the time saved by convenient tools really spent on more important things? What are the more important things?
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