The Great Disconnect

The Disconnect Between Companies And Consumers

I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a gulf between what companies are offering and what consumers actually want. Between Apple literally crushing physical tools of creativity and Adobe suggesting photographers should “Skip the photoshoot,” there has been a recent rash of companies doing some serious backtracking. KFC ran an extra-fingered promotion that missed the mark and generated comments such as:

“Imagine paying artists for their services,” one commenter wrote. 
“What a mediocre idea,” wrote another.
“Bring back potato wedges and the OG Twister wrap,” a disgruntled commenter demanded.

How are they getting their customers so wrong? Partly, because they're solving for their stakeholders, not customers. Or they're too wrapped up in internal hype.

"But the real problem, PetaPixel argued, is that the marketing wasn’t aimed at photographers—it was focused on their clients..." 

Companies are always pumped about new technology. They’re happy to get on the hype train because they want to make money. Nothing wrong with that. But AI in particular is a solution looking for a problem. And that’s a terrible way to innovate for customers. Help me on a Tuesday with the boring stuff. The latest weekly Mintel report is all about consumer convenience. Instead, we get seven fingered stock photography. I imagine those more useful things will come in time, but we're not there yet.

Adobe is a great example of a company not really paying attention to its end users. In addition to the snafu I mentioned above, it has gotten even more flack because of new terminology in their TOS that suggests to users that they can access, use and monitor your work. Meta has also been sneaking in language about using your content to train AI, and making it incredibly hard (or not an option at all) to opt out. Whether or not Adobe really "meant it like that" or not, they could have taken much greater care to roll that out rather than doing a sneak. But Adobe has always been more concerned with selling their software to companies instead of their actual end users, and designers and creatives are growing weary.

Plain Ol' Disconnecting

And all of this leads us into a trend where a lot of people are beginning to look for less technology, at least in their non-work lives. 

Exhibit A:
Dumbphones of which this is only one beautifully designed example.

Punkt.: minimalist design and enhanced data privacy

Punkt. is a Swiss design-led consumer technology company that make products which aim to simplify lives and create a healthy work life balance.

Punkt

Exhibit B:
Brick my Phone

Exhibit C:
Offline Club

Exhibit D:
Matt Klein's excellent article, Presence in the Mosh Pit, distills a growing feeling about technology becoming an obstacle to enjoying yourself, not a bridge. The link may be blocked by a sign up, but the sign up is free.

There are many more Exhibits out there. Folks have also become frustrated with the "enshittification" of social media platforms, which are now built for ads, not connection, even though connection is high on the list of what consumers want. Why does LinkedIn keep suggesting I follow a bunch of sports personalities? I'm sure they're great people, but I don't follow any sports. So we’re coming to the fork in the road where people will become more intentional about their technology usage. Does this serve me well or not? Is it fun or useful? Is it wasting my time? Those are all great questions to consciously ask these days. And at some point, hopefully soon, companies will have to come back to delighting the end user.