Technology should be designed to fail - occasionally
I entered my car, plugged in my iPhone and the song I wanted to hear automatically started playing from the beginning on the perfect volume level. This was all a coincidence, for now. What I experienced is something that we will all experience in the future. It is something many tech companies are now trying to create using Artificial Intelligence or other 'smart' solutions. This means the devices and the software we use, learn what we want to do next and already assist us in doing it. Like Google Now, that conveniently shows your flight tickets on the day you have to travel. Next to that, our devices are simply getting much better than before, with less hiccups. I hate it.
You probably don't remember, but back in the days there were milkmen that would go to your front door and bring you a bottle of milk, yoghurt or butter. After some time this milkman would know exactly when you wanted a new bottle of milk or yoghurt, so you did not have to ask him every week again for the same. And he would also know when your wife was home... alone. An AI that learns your preferences is apparently nothing new to us. Even an AI that knows when your wife is home alone is nothing new.
In my example about my music it was just a coincidence and not a piece of code that learnt what I wanted to play, because the iPhone can't learn my music preference yet. But this experience did give me the feeling like it was programmed. It gave me the unique opportunity to experience a world where my phone knows me better than I know myself. On the one hand I felt lucky that my iPhone did exactly what I wanted without me doing anything and it gave me a luxurious feeling (while my car is not luxurious at all). But on the other hand... Today I had troubles playing a song from my phone. I had to close and reopen Spotify and handpick the right song. That was nice. I felt like I had control over my device again. So maybe, just maybe, we should design systems that sometimes fail on purpose (maybe at very specific times), so that the user can fix it. And failing in this case, would just mean that your phone does not know what to play next and therefore requires you to pick your song. This leads to a feeling of slight irritation but in the end a feeling of satisfaction, a purpose for life. Because fixing something is like a game. It's a challenge. A puzzle. Solving problems is a sort of gamification. Failification!
I'm not a gamer, but I did play Pony Island recently and it is a perfect example of failification. This game is about a game. It's the 'inception' of games. The plot in short is this: you are trapped in a broken arcade, designed by the devil himself and you have to escape. The devil, portrayed as a fictional AI, wants to take control over you. You can stop him by fixing pieces of code or 'problems' with the program. His mistakes are your way out. Fixing problems gives you control. Of course, this is the devils' game and perhaps he designed the problems on purpose to trick you and solving it only causes more mayhem. Still, I do see similarities between this game and devices and software that are built today.
Our devices are evolving. That's for sure. They know our whereabouts, plans, contacts, emails, history and in the future perhaps even our emotions. In a few years my music app won't even have an interface. Why bother?! It knows it's morning, I'm a running late, had a few too many beers yesterday night and it read a text message from my mother. It knows exactly what music to play, so I don't need to select one myself. I don't want that! So the only time I have to truly interact with the device is when I encounter a bug, so I can escape. Perhaps, and this is just a thought, the bugs should be built in. We can design technology to fail. Because there's another problem with these evolving devices and programs. It stops our development.
As a Creative Technologist I will work with technology in the future. I like technology, but the human side is even more important. It might sound ridiculous to say that we should built in bugs (or challenges as I would like to call them) but it satisfies a need we all have to solve problems and feel like our existence matters. I started thinking about future devices that would be so great, they wouldn't fail anymore and it just made me wonder. I think I am onto something, but maybe this is all just an overreaction to a coincidence in my car.
What do you think? How would you like to interact with your device in the future?