By Jason Fried · world.hey.com · @jasonfried on X · LinkedIn
Jason Fried describes staying in a brand-new rental house packed with smart-home technology and finds it worse than basic, older equipment. Lights, a TV, a dishwasher that needs an app, a thermostat, and an alarm panel each require learning, guessing, or calling for help, and laggy responses make everything feel unreliable. He contrasts this with an older vacation house that used plain switches, unconnected appliances, and clearly labeled dials, where nothing needed explaining. His point is that many 'smart' interfaces add complexity without solving real problems, and that the best design is the one people understand instantly.
01Key takeaways
- Adding connectivity and screens can make a product worse if it makes basic actions harder to perform.
- Physical controls with tactile feedback and clear state make users confident they did the right thing.
- A feature that requires a tour, instructions, or an app to operate is a usability failure, not a convenience.
- Lag and unreliable feedback signal that a system is overloaded and erode user trust.
- Aim for the interface a first-time user understands instantly, and treat the need to ask for help as a design defect.
02Key sections
- A house full of regressions
- The new rental has advanced systems, but Fried finds each one harder to use than it should be. Lights, TV, dishwasher, thermostat, and alarm each add confusion.
- Lag and the cost of connection
- Everything responds a beat late, which he reads as a sign the system is straining. Connectivity requirements, like needing an app to run a dishwasher, add friction rather than value.
- Skepticism toward one-button promises
- Fried is not against technology, but he doubts that scenes and automation yet deliver the simplicity they promise. He sees the current state as primitive.
- The contrast with an older house
- A Montana rental with physical switches, standalone appliances, and clear dials felt effortless. Its only modern element was a TV, and everything else was obvious.
03From the post
“My folks are in town visiting us for a couple months so we rented them a house nearby. It’s new construction. No one has lived in it yet. It’s amped up with state of the art systems. You know, the ones with touchscreens of various sizes, IoT appliances, and interfaces that try too hard. And it’s terrible. What a regression.…”
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.