<story><title>Amazon Dash</title><url>https://fresh.amazon.com/dash</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dotBen</author><text>HN&amp;#x27;ers asking why this isn&amp;#x27;t a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we &lt;i&gt;(geeks)&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re rarely the target customer and rarely behave like &amp;quot;average Joe&amp;quot;. We&amp;#x27;re naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy &lt;i&gt;(&amp;quot;My phone can already snap a barcode, I don&amp;#x27;t need a separate device&amp;quot;)&lt;/i&gt; when consumers don&amp;#x27;t even see the duplication let alone the issue.  They don&amp;#x27;t separate devices (or even apps) has having layers of similarity and just see things for their end functionality.&lt;p&gt;My mother would see a phone and apps as completely separate functionality to a physical device like this.  She probably would have the Amazon Fresh scanner, the &lt;i&gt;(theoretical)&lt;/i&gt; Google Shopping Express scanner and the &lt;i&gt;(also theoretical)&lt;/i&gt; Whole Foods scanner and wouldn&amp;#x27;t even consider the duplication, let alone be frustrated by it.  She doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the potential for an &amp;quot;open standard&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;common standard&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;She also has an AppleTV and a ChromeCast connected to the same smart-TV that also has native apps within it &lt;i&gt;(she mostly uses the native apps)&lt;/i&gt;.  Again, she sees no issue with that and might even buy an Amazon FireTV if she felt it was more compelling for one use.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately we shouldn&amp;#x27;t assume consumers value convergence, especially when it creates ever increasing complexity in user experience &lt;i&gt;(eg opening an app to snap a barcode vs pressing a single button on an Amazon Fresh scanner)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;ADDED: If you don&amp;#x27;t have parents that also work in tech, go visit them and just watch them use technology without prompting. Ask them about their experiences, their frustrations, their decisions behind purchasing specific equipment and downloading particular apps. It&amp;#x27;s very insightful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrxd</author><text>Agreed. Other advantages:&lt;p&gt;A dedicated device means everyone in the household can use it without the friction of having to help everyone find the app and register with the same account.&lt;p&gt;People without phones (like kids) can use it.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s designed to sit on the kitchen counter or hooked on to something. That physical presence reminds you to use it when you&amp;#x27;re in the kitchen, where an app buried on the last page of the home screen is easy to forget.&lt;p&gt;The camera-based barcode scanners like the one built into the Amazon mobile app are significantly more difficult to use than laser scanners. In a grocery shopping context, shoppers will purchase dozens of different products and every bit of additional frustration and delay matters.&lt;p&gt;One issue with the website: the hero image is really bad. The background is blurred out so there&amp;#x27;s no context and there are no other objects in the frame so I have no sense of scale. If there was like an apple next to it or something, and you could see it was in a kitchen, that would be so much better.</text></comment>
<story><title>Amazon Dash</title><url>https://fresh.amazon.com/dash</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dotBen</author><text>HN&amp;#x27;ers asking why this isn&amp;#x27;t a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we &lt;i&gt;(geeks)&lt;/i&gt; don&amp;#x27;t make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re rarely the target customer and rarely behave like &amp;quot;average Joe&amp;quot;. We&amp;#x27;re naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy &lt;i&gt;(&amp;quot;My phone can already snap a barcode, I don&amp;#x27;t need a separate device&amp;quot;)&lt;/i&gt; when consumers don&amp;#x27;t even see the duplication let alone the issue.  They don&amp;#x27;t separate devices (or even apps) has having layers of similarity and just see things for their end functionality.&lt;p&gt;My mother would see a phone and apps as completely separate functionality to a physical device like this.  She probably would have the Amazon Fresh scanner, the &lt;i&gt;(theoretical)&lt;/i&gt; Google Shopping Express scanner and the &lt;i&gt;(also theoretical)&lt;/i&gt; Whole Foods scanner and wouldn&amp;#x27;t even consider the duplication, let alone be frustrated by it.  She doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the potential for an &amp;quot;open standard&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;&amp;quot;common standard&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;She also has an AppleTV and a ChromeCast connected to the same smart-TV that also has native apps within it &lt;i&gt;(she mostly uses the native apps)&lt;/i&gt;.  Again, she sees no issue with that and might even buy an Amazon FireTV if she felt it was more compelling for one use.&lt;p&gt;Ultimately we shouldn&amp;#x27;t assume consumers value convergence, especially when it creates ever increasing complexity in user experience &lt;i&gt;(eg opening an app to snap a barcode vs pressing a single button on an Amazon Fresh scanner)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;ADDED: If you don&amp;#x27;t have parents that also work in tech, go visit them and just watch them use technology without prompting. Ask them about their experiences, their frustrations, their decisions behind purchasing specific equipment and downloading particular apps. It&amp;#x27;s very insightful.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Rusky</author><text>&amp;gt; Ultimately we shouldn&amp;#x27;t assume consumers value convergence, especially when it creates ever increasing complexity in user experience&lt;p&gt;Reminds me of this excellent article by Bret Victor: &lt;a href=&quot;http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;worrydream.com&amp;#x2F;ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Making everything an app narrows the bandwidth between the user and the tool. Now everyone needs a phone, and you can&amp;#x27;t leave the scanner where it gets used, and you have to go through the generalized touch interface to get to the functionality instead of (and this is a valid UI) just picking up the scanner.</text></comment>