This article’s title is turnabout on the French proverb, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That is not the case in technology. I know many examples where technological enhancements cause the need for further improvement or refinement. Technology often changes our behavior causing a need to adjust to the new behavior. At times this feels like an infinite recursion, which it may well be. (As an aside, Googling “recursion” will display Google’s attempt at logical humor.)
An example of this occurred in the mid-1970s. I worked at Citicorp and had been a member of the team that invented the modern ATM, which we called CATs (Customer Activated Terminals). We saw these machines as a way of substituting capital for labor, replacing the need for branch tellers and shifting the work load from the bank to the customer. I was in line at the headquarter branch waiting to use one of the ATMs. It was Friday afternoon and the line was long since we all wanted cash for the weekend. There were no lines in the teller area and four available tellers. I couldn’t use a teller because I didn’t have a check with me. I could use the ATM because I had my Citicard. The tellers could not give a customer cash from his Citicard. We had succeeded in changing customer behavior thereby unbalancing demand in favor of the machines. Citibank eventually fixed this and today tellers can work with a customer’s card.
Recently, People’s United Bank changed their ATMs to add a question when one first interacts with the machine inquiring what language would we want. This is a good change, except that I don’t feel I need to answer this question more than once. People’s should program their systems to remember my response since it is highly unlikely I will ever answer that question differently. Perhaps someday someone at People’s will wake up and implement the change. This is a small thing but an annoyance brought about by a change that should be changed again.
It is great that our computers can multitask. In the early days of personal computers this was not possible. You either worked on a word processing document or spreadsheet but not both simultaneously. Have you ever worked on something, perhaps a document, and the computer pops up a message from another application, stealing the system focus, breaking your concentration and frustrating you. There should be a way for us to tell our computers to not do that. Perhaps someday we will be able to mute these responses just as we can turn a cellphone to vibrate rather than ring.
I can think of many innovations that lead to annoyances that I would love to fix. I use many Google services, Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Google Voice, Google Wave, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Maps… It would be nice if Google spent less time creating new services and integrated what they have so that I don’t have to have so many Google tabs opened in my browser. (iGoogle is not the answer.) Update 2009/10/15 7:01a: A Firefox add-on Integrated Gmail addresses much of this issue. It does not seem to work with Google for Your Domain, e.g. rhftech.com.
Another example is that my Kindle can play audiobooks from Audible. Both Kindle and Audible are parts of Amazon. The Kindle reverts to a standby screen after a certain period of inactivity. Unfortunately, it does this while I am listening to an audiobook because it does not recognize the audio playback as “activity”. I then need to move the “power” button to the right to wake up the Kindle. The power button is not easily moved. This is like having the standby screen popup while I am reading a page. This should be reprogrammed.
I can think of many more instances of a need for change brought about by change. I’ll bet you can too. Add a comment to the blog post and tell me what you want to change. Perhaps we can get some of them made.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
I do not think that Google should spend less time creating new services (there are large under-served areas and Google needs to enter all these areas in order to expand. However, all it’s services should integrate more, which is an idea nobody will deny. Maybe they should think about integration at the same time while they are creating these services.
I really liked this blog posting and there are so many room for improvement, especially in the feedback system, where feedback ends usually without action. What we have given here is genuine feedback and could be acted upon immediately by these companies, I am sure they will take months, if not years to notice this on their own as they will not act on customer feedback.
In other words, today we do not require companies, we require company-2 , a company which changes as fast as the majority of customers want a change to happen.
All great points!
Citibank has done what you suggest with their ATMs — a one-time prompt for English/Spanish. They’ve also added pre-sets for “My usual deposit,” “Another deposit,” etc. and these can be customized to include only which account to use or the account plus the amount.
The new machines are very spiffy and, for the first time in the twenty some odd years I’ve been using Citi’s ATMs, there’s always enough ink in them so I can actually read the printed receipts!
The printers Citibank used in the first ATMs built by our subsidiary (Transaction Technology Inc. or TTI) were a contentious point.
The hardware people and budget-meisters wanted no printer or at best a 1970′s supermarket cash register printer (rolled paper) that the customer would tear off. These were a fraction of the cost what the other side wanted. The branch people and marketing types were adamant about using a cut sheet printer that delivered a receipt similar to what one would get from a teller transaction.
These discussions were long and heated. Each side could not see the other’s viewpoint. Thankfully, the branch and marketing people prevailed. This was a small detail that helped launch one of the most successful banking technologies ever.