Improving quality of life means letting users be human

Photo by Dan Dennis

Just remember, technology was supposed to make life better for humanity.

The retort, especially in the dawning age of technofuedalism, is "lol, better for who?". While on aggregate the system maybe works to put money in the pockets of shareholders, my recent experience with Amazon left me utterly dumbfounded.

I'll explain, but first let me clarify my position on Amazon as it is not totally without prejudice.

I consider Amazon (one of the FAANG) to be one of the digital landlords completely at odds with human flourishing. However, unlike actual landlords where real estate is finite, there is infinite space in the digital universe to migrate to. One advantage technofeudalism has over regular feudalism for us plebs is that if we don't like something, we can usually leave. It just becomes a matter of how hard it is to migrate there (and it will be hard, your digital landlord makes it so).

We don't have to go all-in on Google or Apple or whatever, despite them offering some product that services every part of your digital and real lives. Unless of course you're forced to use some platform for work, and even then you can leave your work. At a minimum it might be necessary to have a Gmail account to operate an Android phone, but you can use a different mail client and email address, calendars, maps, etc. By diversifying your services across platforms, or being platform-agnostic, your limiting how totally you can be screwed over. And you will at some point be screwed over. That's how enshittification, or the Rot Economy, works.

This has been my general sentiment for years. Diversify the digital services I invest time or money into. As far as Amazon goes, that means to stop using it altogether. Mostly by not buying crap I don't need, but for what I do need I find local online or even physical stores where I can buy the thing for roughly the same amount of money without the guilt of knowing that the entire supply chain is being exploited for growth. It's the same reason why I don't have a single Adobe product on my system.

So my recent Amazon experience has been both my worst and only experience in a long time.

80 Bucks Worth of Undies

I've been on the lookout for some new underpants. My brother-in-law and nephew have been wearing the Stepone undies for a while and have been happy with them so I thought I'd have a look into them.

They ain't cheap. At roughly $30 a pop, if you want to get a few pairs to see you through the week it adds up quickly. My brother-in-law also has a keen eye for a bargain, so I thought I'd ask him when the best time might be to pick up a few pairs.

So it is that I arrive in my hotel room in Dallas a couple of weeks back and my bother-in-law pings me to let me know his mate can get five pairs of Stepone underpants through Amazon for 50% off. He'll order them and get them delivered directly to me, I'll just pay him the money back.

"Sweet", I thought. I'm away at the moment, as is the rest of my family, but the delivery guy will just leave them at the front door LIKE EVERY OTHER DELIVERY EVER. I don't live in an apartment or townhouse. I don't live in an area where people steal boxes from your front door. I don't expect the delivery to be anywhere except the front door.

I give my brother-in-law my size and preferred colours, and I don't hear anything more about it.

Amazon's Own Goal

When I arrive home, about 12 hours before the rest of my family, there's one box on the front landing, but it doesn't contain underpants. I thought about chasing it up with my brother-in-law, it should have been sitting there for several days, but being Sunday I figured I'd wait until Monday to see if they get delivered.

At no point did it cross my mind they had been stolen (spoiler alert: they hadn't).

Sure enough, Monday rolls around and the delivery guy turns up with my underpants.

To be clear, I'm standing at my front door. The Amazon delivery guy is standing at my front door. He has my delivery in his hand, and he asks me for a One Time Password (OTP).

What?

"Yeah, I can't give you these without a one time password. Can you maybe check your app or something?".

I explain to him I don't have any app or any message with any password. He suggests I contact [a phone number] which is my wife's phone number. Why the heck would my wife have the password? I know she's at work and won't answer, but I try anyway, to know avail.

The guy apologises, gives me his mobile number in case I can get the OTP, and then leaves with my underpants.

Who exactly was getting the OTP is still opaque to me. Somehow my wife was getting some notifications during the week but not the OTPs, and wasn't able to do anything with them anyway as she wasn't home either. So I check in with my brother-in-law on Tuesday. He tells me Amazon failed to deliver too many times, so they returned them and refunded the money.

😲

In simple terms:

• Brother-in-law's mate orders underpants from Amazon
• Amazon driver tries to deliver them to me but can't because nobody is home
• Amazon driver brings them to my front door one last time
• Amazon driver LITERALLY SHOWS ME THE BOX AND THEN LEAVES WITH THE BOX
• Underpants are returned to wherever returns go
• Brother-in-law's mate is refunded

If we also factor in that product returns almost universally go into landfill what do you think is the financial, environmental, and humanitarian cost of this little fiasco? It certainly didn't cost me or my brother-in-law's mate anything, so who picked up the tab to drive a box around several times and then throw it in the bin?

I get it that maybe it prevents delivery to the wrong person within the house, but we're talking $80 worth of undies. It still blows my mind a week later.

A System Bereft of Common Sense

Remember the other package that was waiting for me on the front landing? That was delivered by our local Postie. I don't know the guy's name, but I recognise his face. Someone who knows the area, probably lives here, and understands the level of risk of leaving a package on the front step of this particular house vs taking it back to the post office where I can collect it. He can use his judgement to determine the best course of action to ensure the box is delivered via the safest and most efficient method.

He can use his common sense.

Australia Post, in one incarnation or another, has been successfully delivering things for 216 years without OTPs.

Technology was supposed to make life better. Yet by turning people into reverse-centaurs, technology has made life worse for almost everyone.

Humans are weird and random and unique. Our experiences and circumstances are equally weird and random and unique. That's what makes the world interesting. As weird as we are, we are also, on average, powerful at thinking and reasoning. As much as the tech monopolists would like to think we all fit the one mould so we can all fit their one system, that's not the real world. As much as the AI bandwagoneers would love you to think their systems are powerful at thinking and reasoning, that is not the real world.

You want an efficient system? When designing, let your users use their common sense.

Now I'm back in the market for underpants*.

Footnote

In the same vein, but in a different context, this is something that should often be considered when working in ergonomics. If you design your ergonomic solution too rigidly, it can make the 'comfort band' too narrow for many users. It could work great for some, but not great for others. Sometimes the least amount of ergonomics is the most ergonomic solution. It allows users to adapt the system so it works for them.

* Interestingly, doing some more research into Stepone since being back home, it looks like their quality has also got worse. The march of capitalism continues.