Are we stuck with the same toothbrush UX forever?
replies(5):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMuTG6fOMCg
The variety of form factors offered are the only difference
On the positive side, my electronic toothbrush allows me to avoid excessive pressure via real-time green/red light.
On the negative side, it guilt trips me with a sad face emoji any time my brushing time is under 2 minutes.
Correct? I agree with this precisely but assume you’re writing it sarcastically
From the point of view of the starting state of the mouth to the end state of the mouth the USER EXPERIENCE is the same: clean teeth
The FORM FACTOR is different: Electric version means ONLY that I don’t move my arm
“Most people” can’t do multiplication in their head so I’m not looking to them to understand
Now compare that variance to the variance options given with machine and computing UX options
you’ll see clearly that one (toothbrushing) is less than one stdev different in steps and components for the median use case and one (computing) is nearly infinite variance (no stable stdev) between median use case steps and components.
The fact that the latter state space manifold is available but the action space is constrained inside a local minima is an indictment on the capacity for action space traversal by humans.
This is reflected again with what is a point action space (physically ablate plaque with abrasive) in the possible state space of teeth cleaning for example: chemical only/non ablative, replace teeth entirely every month, remove teeth and eat paste, etc…
So yes I collapsed that complexity into calling it “UX” which classically can be described via UML
Because we've been stuck with the same bicycle UX for like 150 years now.
Sometimes shit just works right, just about straight out of the gate.
By the 1870s we'd pretty much standardised on the "Safety Bicycle", which had a couple of smallish wheels about two and a half feet in olden days measurements in diameter, with a chain drive from a set of pedals mounted low in the frame to the rear wheel.
By the end of the 1880s, you had companies mass-producing bikes that wouldn't look unreasonable today. All we've done since is make them out of lighter metal, improve the brakes from pull rods to cables to hydraulic discs brakes, and give them more gears (it wouldn't be until the early 1900s that the first hub gears became available, with - perhaps surprisingly - derailleurs only coming along 100 years ago).
Ask any person to go and find a stick and use it to brush their teeth, and then ask if that "experience" was the same as using their toothbrush. Invoking UML is absurd.
Funny how we haven’t done anything on the scale of Hoover Dam, Three Gorges, ISS etc…since those got thrown away
User Experience also means something specific in information theory and UX and UML is designed to model that explicitly:
https://www.pst.ifi.lmu.de/~kochn/pUML2001-Hen-Koch.pdf
Good luck vibe architecting
A UX revolution in teeth-cleaning technology would probably look like some kind of bio-organism or colony that eats plaque and kills plaque-producing bacteria. In an ideal world you wouldn't have to brush your teeth at all, aside from an occasionally floss or scrub.
UML and functional definitions and iso standards are still important, it's just not UX.
Good luck never observing users using your product. Not everything is a space shuttle, recall that we are talking about toothbrushes here.
I can have a personal dentist brush my teeth while I lie down.
There's a point where UX-that-works-at-acceptable-cost is good enough.
Maybe desktop UX is like the shark. An evolutionary dead-end, but it gets the job done extremely well. (Would be cool if they have lasers on their frickin' heads though)
In the last 20 years alone we've seen introduced or popularized:
Carbon frames, carbon wheels, disk/hydraulic brakes, expanded cassettes (2x11, 2x12), electric shifters, aerodynamic wheels, string spokes, and a boat load of different tires (for different levels of comfort, speed, durability, grip) for whatever you are doing. That's road bikes.
For mountain bikes you have all of that (minus aerodynamic stuff), dropper posts, 1x drive trains (1 chainring, 12 gears on the cassette, these are so good people want them on road/gravel bikes too) plus a slow evolution of geometry that completely changes how the bike feels on different terrain (also making them safer on dangerous terrain), plus a slow march from incredibly heavy builds to today's lightweight builds which are still more than capable of handling downhill. And in that same time-frame you'll see them going from 26" to 29" wheels, which results in a massive difference in the way the bike rides, and also the bike's ability to go over obstacles. And tubeless tires are now popularized on MTB, which means you can run lower pressures for better comfort and traction, and you also spend a lot less time futzing with holes in tubes.
Not to mention... E-bikes. There's just been so much going on. A lot of that might sound like it does a bunch of nothing, but all of it contributes heavily to how the bike feels and performs overall. Carbon frames and wheels for example aren't just about weight savings, they make the bike more rigid (which changes how it responds to inputs) and reduce vibration making the bike more comfortable overall. If you were somehow blindfolded and put on a bike from 20 years ago versus one from today you'd be able to tell. Doubly so for 40 years ago.
