20
Everyday Hassles That Tech Killed in the 21st Century
Story By ceros originals Design by OLIVIA BROWN
Just two decades ago, we all regularly performed mundane, often tedious tasks that would seem comically inconvenient today. Picking up the phone to order a pizza? (It’s 1954!) Consulting a map? (Better round up the horse and buggy.) We took the end of the decade as an excuse to review the many common hassles that technology has obliterated over the past 20 years—and to highlight the UX advances that make them possible.
BEHAVIORS
SOFTWARE
HARDWARE
SWIPE
TAP
HARD TAP
SPEAK
FLICK
PINCH & SPREAD
SLIDE
ROTATE
SCROLL
FACIAL RECOGNITION
AUTOCORRECT
NOTIFICATIONS
VIRTUAL ASSISTANT
VOICE DICTATION
SOUND
HAPTIC FEEDBACK
PREDICTIVE ALGORITHM
COMPUTATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY
ACCELOROMETER
FRONT FACING CAMERA
CAMERA
BLUETOOTH CHIP
NFC CHIP
GPS ANTENNA
MICROPHONE
HAPTIC FEEDBACK ENGINE
FINGERPRINT SCANNER
These are what UX Behaviors, Software, and Hardware are.
CLICK TO EXPLORE
01
HASSLE NUMBER ONE
Finding the nearest gas station in the middle of nowhere.
Online mapping can be traced back to 1967, when a Chicago-based cartographic company began writing computer code that could customize maps and driving directions.
UX IN ACTION
Making a bank deposit.
The Check 21 Act of 2004 legalized the processing of digital images for checks, allowing financial institutions to stay operational in the event of a catastrophe that would make physical deposits impossible. The very first check to be scanned and deposited from a smartphone app was processed on July 4, 2009. Who goes to the bank anymore?
02
HASSLE NUMBER TWO
Having to ask the bartender, “What song is this again?”
Before you could just hold up your phone and get a song title faster than you could say “Shazam,” you had to dial a number and wait for a callback. Prior to that, it was ‘Hey, bartender.” This is progress.
03
HASSLE NUMBER THREE
No cash, no card.
In addition to enabling a faster and easier checkout process, frictionless payments are also much more secure; credit card information is hidden from merchants in the case of a data breach.
04
HASSLE NUMBER FOUR
Remembering to restock household essentials.
The current number of items available to order online via voice command is in the tens of millions, and there are just as many retailers happy to accept responsibility for reminding you that you’re about to run out of paper towels.
05
HASSLE NUMBER FIVE
Finding a parking space in a busy parking lot.
Initially used in planes, advanced driver-assistance systems in cars can now locate parking spots, completely hands-free. No need to yell at whoever just stole the spot you had your eye on; you’ve been notified that there’s another one right around the corner.
06
HASSLE NUMBER SIX
Remembering strong passwords for all of your accounts.
Of the 38 million accounts accessed in Adobe’s 2013 data breach fiasco, a shocking number of them were these shockingly insecure combinations: “123456,” “12345678,” “Password,” “Adobe123,” “12345678,” and “photoshop.”
07
HASSLE NUMBER SEVEN
Having to actually choose a movie or TV show to watch.
Current recommendation algorithms base their selections on a complex chain of factors, including duration of time spent watching specific content, what time of day you watch, what device you watch it on, and even what kind of thumbnails you’re likely to click on.
08
HASSLE NUMBER EIGHT
Uh, English.
The first spell checker was released in 1961 and contained 10,000 words out of some 170,000 commonly used in the English language. Still, it would only verify typos—not actually fix the spelling for you.
09
HASSLE NUMBER NINE
Finding a date.
Nearly 60% of U.S. adults believe dating apps to be a good way to meet people, with usage by young adults more than tripling since 2013. The most popular day to search for a match? Valentine’s Day, of course.
10
HASSLE NUMBER TEN
Organizing, labeling, and sharing photos.
According to a report by GigaOM, the average user adds 150 new photos and 8 videos per month to their mobile device. Thankfully, modern apps do the bulk of organizing, labeling, and sharing albums utilizing GPS, facial recognition, and other clever technologies.
11
HASSLE NUMBER ELEVEN
Adjusting the thermostat to conserve energy.
Smart thermostats are expected to be in 46% of households by 2050—saving homeowners a combined $640 billion and eliminating 2.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions alone.
12
HASSLE NUMBER TWELVE
Transcribing voice recordings into useful notes.
Forget tape recorders. AI-based transcription services can now record and transcribe searchable audio in real-time from any device and store it in the Cloud, and they’re getting smarter and more accurate all the time.
13
HASSLE NUMBER THIRTEEN
Ordering from a foreign restaurant menu.
Google’s AI language translation methods—known as neural machine translation (NMT)—are capable of translating over 60 languages in real-time using a smartphone camera.
14
HASSLE NUMBER FOURTEEN
Finding friends or family members.
Based on navigational systems used to assist ships and planes during World War II, the satellite network known as GPS is now found in just about every mobile device.
15
HASSLE NUMBER FIFTEEN
Taking a picture that doesn’t suck.
Modern computational photography uses smartphone hardware to capture image data, then uses advanced software algorithms to adjust image parameters in milliseconds. That yields ideal image results— regardless of skill level.
16
HASSLE NUMBER SIXTEEN
Forgetting where you left...just about anything.
The first consumer Bluetooth device, a hands-free mobile headset, was launched in 1999 with limited range. Today, location-based hardware and services are built in to just about every smart device as a standard feature, with a range of up to 400 feet.
17
HASSLE NUMBER SEVENTEEN
Waiting in line to order coffee.
In 2018, the volume of orders placed through order-ahead mobile apps increased by 130 percent compared to 2016. Due to popularity, Starbucks opened the first mobile pickup-only store near New York City’s Penn Station in November of 2019.
18
HASSLE NUMBER EIGHTEEN
Chasing down your cash-poor friends.
The idea for modern peer-to-peer payment systems was conceived in 2009 during a jazz show, when two freshman roommates at the University of Pennsylvania imagined having the option to instantly buy an MP3 via text message.
19
HASSLE NUMBER NINETEEN
Hungry with an empty refrigerator.
As more consumers turn to apps for convenience-based services, digital order-ahead and delivery-based dining has grown 300 percent faster than dine-in traffic since 2014.
HASSLE NUMBER TWENTY
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