The Design Office of Nick Sloggett
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EssayMay ’242 min read

A new paradigm still has to tell the time

This spring Vision Pro, the AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 were each sold as a new way to use a computer. All three were judged on the oldest jobs a computer has.

Tell me the time. Show me what needs me. Do what I asked, the first time. Let me take it back. Don’t make me wonder whether it heard me.

Those are the oldest jobs a computer has, and in the first months of this year three new kinds of computer were judged on them. Apple’s Vision Pro shipped on February 2. Humane’s AI Pin, announced last November, reached reviewers in April, and Marques Brownlee titled his video The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed… For Now. The Rabbit R1, which sold 10,000 units on its first day after CES, got its full reviews in the first days of May, Engadget’s among them.

Each was sold as a new paradigm. Each was judged on whether it could do old jobs well.

The Pin’s reviews spent little time on whether projecting onto your palm is a good idea. They were about slow answers, wrong answers and a device that ran hot. The R1 shipped with four app integrations, and reviewers found that the thing it promised, acting for you inside apps, mostly didn’t work. Vision Pro does the old jobs far better than the other two, and its reviews still came back to weight, battery and how long you can wear it.

A new interface earns nothing for being new. It gets a few minutes of goodwill, and then it’s held to the standard of the thing in your pocket.

Every new paradigm asks people to learn something. That cost is paid up front, and it only makes sense if the new thing does an old job better. The demo shows the magic. Daily use shows the friction: the extra step, the gesture you misremember, the answer you have to double-check.

For anyone designing whatever comes next: do the boring jobs flawlessly first, meaning status, feedback, reliability and undo. Undo is the one new products forget. Most of what an experimentation platform is for is being able to turn a change off the moment it misbehaves. Then spend the novelty budget on the one thing only your form can do, and expect to be judged on the boring jobs anyway.