Boring Is Beautiful

I have a lot of smarthome gadgets - but my favourite is the Tado° Thermostat. I think it might be the most boring gadget I've ever used - and that's why I love it!

We spend far too much time staring at our screens. We obsessively tend to our digital gardens and rarely spend the time to enjoy them. Our smart watches constantly buzz with news from the social media service du jour. Where are the apps that respect our time?

Tado° is the most boring app on the planet. I used it once to set up what temperature we wanted the house to be. Then I told it what to do when my partner or I are out of the house. I haven't touched it since.

The app sits in the background. If I'm away from the home, it lets the temperature drop. If I start getting closer to home, it begins to warm things up. That's it! No nagging notifications, no microtransactions, no constant exhortations to recommend it to my friends, no begging to share my temperature on Twitter. Nothing! Beautiful simplicity.

This is what app designers and service designers should be aiming for. When we measure how long a person spends on our website or app, we should be aiming for the lowest possible number! Engagement is a vanity metric. If someone can visit our site and complete their task in under a minute, or buy our products in seconds flat, we should be celebrating.

We have to stop stealing our users' time.