Premature Products

One of the downsides of our accelerating consumption society is its product push. Caused by the ever-increasing demand for new products, it results in their premature launch, and life in an incubator.

These products are tossed to the lions unprepared. They are the early-borns of our product economy; over-equipped, packed with future features that are not supposed to be on the market yet, let alone in the hands of the masses, early adopters or any consumer for that matter.

Companies tend to neglect a thorough usability research nor do they embark on serious interaction and user testing. This results in products which are unusable, sporting technologies which have not reached their full potential. Moreover, the consumer is presented as the test subject, with the market as the probe area.

A good example of this is the Philips Lightscribe, a label writer combined with a DVD burner. It makes you wonder how such a brilliant and simple idea can turn into a poor premature launched product. The product lacks usability; you have to take out the disc and flip in the process. Next to that it’s dead slow, taking longer to burn a label than the actual disc.