By Gary Hartley
Steve Jobs’ recent passing was a great loss, and not just to Apple devotees. Jobs did the rest of us a huge service as well by pushing a fundamental principle to the forefront of the digital age – technology should be as simple and easy to use as possible.
The Apple co-founder and chief executive seems to have been crystal clear on this as an imperative for designers of digital technology since he and Steve Wozniack launched the first Apple personal computer in 1976.
In the tech-speak of software developers, it is about all about “improving the user interface” – between people and machines.
Jobs put it this way in a 1997 speech:
“You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.”
The approach seems to have worked for Apple and over the past decade, Jobs and co have certainly raised the bar on user interfacing with MP3 players, tablet computers and smartphones.
So what about other technologies for computing and communicating? What does the Jobs creed mean for something like radio frequency identification (RFID).
“Come on,” I hear someone yell (perhaps an Apple fanatic),”RFID tags and readers could never be as sexy as my ipod or iphone.”
Maybe not, but the central point is that all technologies can – and if we apply the Jobs principle, should be – designed with the end user top of mind. RFID systems, like any technology, can be made simpler and easier to use, and thereby have much greater value to their users.
It is true that the usability of RFID tags, readers and databases has improved greatly over the past five years. Previously vendors offered pieces of hardware and software, and then largely left their customers to go figure out how to create a system.
Progress has been made, but reader interfaces are often still clunky and RFID has a long way to go before it works in just the way everyone would expect.
Among Steve Jobs’ other big ideas was an insistence that technology designers have to actually anticipate what users will want.
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new,” Jobs once said.
That certainly applies to RFID with its vast potential for expanding efficiency, transparency and choice in supply chains.
Most future users would struggle to know exactly what they want from this technology until it is developed and presented to them. And the easier it is made to use, the quicker they will “get it”.
Of course, technologies are developed – and become increasingly understood and easier to use – one in relation to another. With RFID it is probably the Internet that will really make the difference because together, they enable objects (consumer items, assets, buildings or whatever) to be identified and monitored between locations regardless of the distance between them.
RFID tags and sensors initiate communication about things for any number of purposes and the Internet extends that potential vastly. A simple example would be a food exporting company monitoring the condition and location of temperature-sensitive products en route to market using RFID-enabled sensors, the Internet and satellite communications: Monitoring can be near real time.
Interesting to see Gartner, the technology forecasters, recently list the “Internet of things” among the top 10 strategic technologies for 2012.
We have known the concept for years now but Gartner says inter-related technologies – including embedded sensors and the near field communication (NFC) form of RFID – have developed to the point where the “Internet of things” is about to have a major impact on businesses worldwide.
Actually, it is only a matter of time before the impact reaches consumers as well. For example NFC can be added to smartphones so that “things” can communicate with us at our instant command.
The NFC-enabled phone could be waved at the NFC tag on an object of interest with the phone then performing some useful function like taking you to a specific Web site.
That sort of thing could make RFID very sexy.
We do not know what Steve Jobs’ advice on RFID would be, but I’m pretty sure it be along the lines of, “make it simple and easy to use – and hurry up”.
If you have questions for Mr Hartley or suggestions on areas of interest in his specialist area, e-mail editor Mike Bishara at [email protected], reference Gary Hartley.
