{"id":1138,"date":"2020-09-29T08:06:38","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T08:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2020-09-29T08:06:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T08:06:45","slug":"why-are-there-so-many-stupid-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/09\/29\/why-are-there-so-many-stupid-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are there so many stupid products?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During the last year, I\u2019ve been in several discussions that, to a large extent, boiled down to \u201cwhy is this product so stupid?\u201d. The stupidity was defined by the lack of the system to anticipate user actions, the inability to learn to function better in a specific context or the total reliance on the user initiating activities by the system even if it was completely obvious what needed to be done. A few examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A representative of a company building radars relayed the story of \nbeing asked by a customer why the radar, once placed in a specific \nlocation, functioned the same after 2 minutes, 2 hours, 2 days and 2 \nmonths. Why wasn\u2019t the radar learning from its context and improving its\n ability to detect objects by knowing what the static elements in the \nenvironment are and using that to better distinguish new objects?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A user of a route planning system complained about frequently being \nlate for meetings because he wasn\u2019t proactively warned for traffic jams \nthat didn\u2019t exist when he looked up the expected travel time the day \nbefore. Why doesn\u2019t the system warn me, he lamented, for an unexpected \ntraffic jam due to an accident or something so that I can leave earlier?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A company using expensive, high-tech equipment complained about the \nsystem being unable to adapt and get the hang of their very predictable \nschedule of operations. The equipment required adjustment time between \ndifferent types of usage and even though the company ran virtually the \nsame schedule day after day, the system didn\u2019t learn to initiate the \nreconfiguration and subsequent adjustment by itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these systems are built to the specifications that were put up \nbefore the start of development. All of them passed the validation and \nverification tests with flying colors. And yet, they fail to delight \ncustomers and users and provide significantly less efficiency and \neffectiveness than what they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being in the age of AI, we have a set of tools in our toolbox that \ncan help address the stupidity of products. Using different forms of \nlearning and experimentation, we\u2019re able to include behavior in systems \nfor detecting patterns, developing hypotheses on these patterns being \nconsistent, running experiments of proactive system behavior, measuring \nthe effect of the experiment and then learning from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A theoretical AI researcher may claim that this is reinforcement \nlearning and at its core, that\u2019s a correct conclusion. However, it would\n also violate the Einstein principle of making everything as simple as \npossible, but not simpler. The key challenge around making systems \nsmarter isn\u2019t the basic reinforcement learning, but rather our ability \nto realize the aforementioned activities and behavior in systems without\n causing safety or security risks, without annoying the user (remember \nClippy?), managing the stochastic nature of feedback and to focus on \nthose things that actually add value for the user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, customers are increasingly expecting their products to get \nbetter every day they use them. I want my car, my phone, my computer, my\n apps, my wearables to get better every day. I want my devices to learn \nfrom me and my behavior to deliver more value to me by adjusting \naccordingly. To achieve this, it\u2019s not enough to adopt DevOps and run \nA\/B tests, but it also requires fully autonomous experimentation by \nsystems at speeds that R&D organizations simply cannot match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our systems shouldn\u2019t nudge us into different behaviors, as many social media apps tend to do, but rather act proactively on our behalf and to our benefit. I want the systems that I use and interact with to take the lead and remove the burden of always remembering and initiating activities from my shoulders and free me to focus on the things that I\u2019m uniquely good at. Please stop building stupid systems and focus on adding smart, proactive behavior instead of yet another feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get more insights earlier, sign up for my newsletter at <\/em>jan@janbosch.com<\/em><\/a> or follow me on<\/em> janbosch.com\/blog<\/em><\/a>, LinkedIn (<\/em>linkedin.com\/in\/janbosch<\/em><\/a>) or Twitter (<\/em>@JanBosch<\/em><\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the last year, I\u2019ve been in several discussions that, to a large extent, boiled down to \u201cwhy is this product so stupid?\u201d. The stupidity was defined by the lack of the system to anticipate user actions, the inability to learn to function better in a specific context or the total reliance on the user … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,4,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1140,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janbosch.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}