Disappearing Technology
Amazon’s electronic book reader, called the Kindle, has been available for about 1 1/2 years. When it first came out, I was struck when hearing about an intentional design quality of the Kindle.
Here is a excerpt from the Amazon website:
Lose Yourself in Your Reading
The most elegant feature of a physical book is that it disappears while you’re reading. Immersed in the author’s world and ideas, you don’t notice a book’s glue, the stitching, or ink. Our top design objective was to make Kindle disappear–just like a physical book–so you can get lost in your reading, not the technology.
I see that as a fundamental goal for all technology. Another way I would describe this is making technology “transparent”. We shouldn’t be using technology for technology-sake but looking beyond the technology to what we are trying to accomplish. It shouldn’t stand in our way. While technology becomes increasingly powerful and complex, our experience should ideally be a simple one.
This is not an easy challenge. Making something transparent yet still useful for the end user often means more planning and complexity behind the scenes. It also means having a good understanding of how people use technology and what they are trying to accomplish. And it involves educating users.
Simply put, I believe that in our schools, technology should be powerful yet transparent.
