i guess you are all familiar with your regular email spam. the only good thing it brings is an endless increase in penis size and the highest possible mortgage in this solar system, though the positive effects of these are highly questionable.

but there is a new player in town: product spam. this threat deals with the industry creating such a huge array of products with minute differences, that the end result raises more questions than clarity. with the speed of technological advancements, product spam is quickly becoming this year’s top trend.

today we will be discussing product spam, its effects, the causes to it and possible cures. so lean back in that fat desk-chair, get yourself a cup of joe, and start reading…

product spam, maybe not the most well-known noun in the world, but certainly an important one. as a designer this is one of the things you have to avoid. to put things a bit more in perspective; I would say it ranks an 7.32 on the “please-avoid-meter”. which, in industrial design territory, is quite high.

to kick things off, one of the main causes of product spam is the rapid advancements in technology. each month brings bigger storage capacities, better screens with increasing resolutions, faster and more processors cramped into smaller spaces and a growing number of antenna’s offering better ranges to all those different signals out there.

every time a technology gets updated, a product gets outdated. companies tend to upgrade their products, trying to stay up to date with the latest developments. in doing so their product-line gets flooded with products, retaining basic form and function, but growing in features.

but it could be a whole lot worse. just imagine what would happen if companies updated their products at every small technological upgrade. “the new nokia, now with 1,000001 megapixels!”

and do add more spam to the ever-growing market: there is the lovely asian community. neglecting every patent and intellectual property, they copy any western product. using cheaper materials and technology, they flood the market with crappy products. just another way to spam, i suppose.

another obvious cause of product spam is the ever-growing desire to make products for everyone out there. with all these different people, and their different needs, there are numerous potential markets. it is supposed to increase the chance for a consumer to find something tailored to their needs. unfortunately, the only thing growing is the likelihood of a consumer having a lot more trouble making that choice.

companies need to realize that the number of people demanding up-to-date products are but a minority of society [or so i assume, quite boldly]. the bigger majority of people require decent products which are easily grabbed from a shelf without much thinking. this is mainly because the bigger majority consists of a bunch of brainless lemmings [not that being a brainless lemming is a bad thing, it is just a state of mind]. product spam eventually causes uncertainty, which moves the customer away from rational choice and towards irrational criteria such as feature count and brand loyalty.

finding solutions to such a disturbing event is not easy though. although good designers make good products, there is no telling what a greedy businessman is capable of doing. engineers can easily change products without the designer ever having any involvement at all. quite a scary thought, right? just imagine: you are shopping for groceries, and your babysitter decides your 3 year old daughter needs a nipple piercing. as i said: quite scary.

doing something about this effect is nearly impossible. engineers find their way around tightly-designed products. the less room you leave for future upgrades, the uglier your design is going to end up eventually. engineers are not designers!

what we need is a spam filter. something which blocks our vision from all those products and highlights the correct choice. i propose the following: a bright intelligent bundle of light directed at the best choice on the shelf. accompanied by a holy “hallelujah”, this thing could take off. i call it “the omen” [though the feasibility of this visionary product is still under debate with philips, our biggest stakeholder and vendor].

what do you guys think? have i got a winner here? or is this just another product destined for the trash? if this does not take off i am either going to build products using concrete and led’s or start distributing my own monthly journal; magazine 358…

jan van der asdonk is a contributor to studio469 in the shape of his creative spamming, manifesting itself in his somewhat distorted views and theories of the world around him. feedback, topic requests and fan mail are all very welcome at jan@studio469.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 23:24 and is filed under Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.