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The touchscreen interface is indeed a design decision, and it was a polarizing one. Many people did _not_ want a touchscreen interface in 2007. They insisted th

by blehn 5y ago

The touchscreen interface is indeed a design decision, and it was a polarizing one. Many people did _not_ want a touchscreen interface in 2007. They insisted that the physical keyboards of their blackberries were more usable and more practical. In 2007, the iPhone was a polarizing product. The comment I responded to implied that the cybertruck is awful _because_ it's polarizing. I gave two examples of wildly successful products that were also polarizing designs.

matthewdgreen 5y ago
And my point is that there is a difference between a polarizing purely-aesthetic design choice and a polarizing feature-set choice. The decision to maximize screen real estate at the cost of a physical keyboard was primarily a feature-set tradeoff. It could have gone spectacularly wrong, but the tradeoff was at least calculated around producing some tangible benefits that people already admitted they wanted. It turned out to be popular in the end because people really wanted to browse websites on their phone, and physical keyboards make it hard to build a portable phone with an acceptable screen. Similarly, the decision to build an electric-only car vs. an ICE/plugin-hybrid car (and in the process free up space under the hood, remove gas tanks, produce a different driving experience) is also a polarizing feature-set choice that produces some aesthetic results. By contrast the design of the Cybertruck, as best I can tell, is almost entirely aesthetic in nature. Insofar as it maximizes certain features, they’re “Mad Max bulletproof indestructibility (but not the windows)” features and I’m not sure those are going to carry the mass market. And Tesla really needs to carry the mass market if they’re going to stay in business long-term. Picking weird aesthetic hills to polarize on and/or betting that what the mass market really wants us to resist small-caliber rifle attacks might work out in the end, but it sure seems like an unnecessary risk.

by blehn 5y ago

matthewdgreen 5y ago

And my point is that there is a difference between a polarizing purely-aesthetic design choice and a polarizing feature-set choice. The decision to maximize screen real estate at the cost of a physical keyboard was primarily a feature-set tradeoff. It could have gone spectacularly wrong, but the tradeoff was at least calculated around producing some tangible benefits that people already admitted they wanted. It turned out to be popular in the end because people really wanted to browse websites on their phone, and physical keyboards make it hard to build a portable phone with an acceptable screen. Similarly, the decision to build an electric-only car vs. an ICE/plugin-hybrid car (and in the process free up space under the hood, remove gas tanks, produce a different driving experience) is also a polarizing feature-set choice that produces some aesthetic results. By contrast the design of the Cybertruck, as best I can tell, is almost entirely aesthetic in nature. Insofar as it maximizes certain features, they’re “Mad Max bulletproof indestructibility (but not the windows)” features and I’m not sure those are going to carry the mass market. And Tesla really needs to carry the mass market if they’re going to stay in business long-term. Picking weird aesthetic hills to polarize on and/or betting that what the mass market really wants us to resist small-caliber rifle attacks might work out in the end, but it sure seems like an unnecessary risk.