Near “Hahvahd Yahd”
A Whole New MindYesterday I had lunch with celebrity designer Frank Nuovo, formerly of Nokia. He showed me his designs from the mythical Vertu line of luxury phones. I didn’t get to touch the actual objects as maybe he didn’t trust me. One of the phones was made of platinum at a pricetag of $30K, and he also mentioned something about custom lasercut ceramic buttons on the face with handpainted lacquer backs. It sounded so good, and given that our meals hadn’t arrived yet, his rich descriptions of the devices made me feel even more famished.
The UI for these devices seemed simpler than the average mobile phone. But since I’m unlikely to ever shell out 4K+ for one of his beautiful creations, I guess I’m stuck getting lost in a cellphone’s menu tree. Does simplicity always have to cost more?
7 Responses to “The Cost of Simplicity”
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They’re not mythical, you can actually buy them in Selfridges London
Then maybe Londoners have a better chance at touching them … I shall remember on a future trip. Thanks!
It’s not that simplicity costs more, i thinks its more about cashflow.
Making something simple means you need to get people(in your company) to invest in their intuition, instead if following the cheaper featuritus mentality.
That is, if the company behind a product is insecure, than they will often pack in a lot of features because intelectually that makes sense.
Apple could have put a microphone input port on the iPod for probably a few cents, and in a lot of organizations (and probably within apple) there would be a strong pressure to do this - as it means another line on the ‘feature list’.
A $30k cellphone case? How utterly vulgar. So this is how it felt right before the French Revolution, huh?
I like Keith’s point about the cost benefits of adding a feature. It seems also by releasing a simple product, you can have third party companies pay the R&D costs for extra peripherals like in the mike+iPod example. And when strong sales are guaranteed, you just add in the feature and wipe out the market for the third party. Maybe simplicity leads to this kind of market brutality we see …
Regarding the downfall of mankind with a $30K phone, I just read a book called A Whole New Mind which had an optimistic take on our accelerating hedonism. Will add a thread about that shortly.
I don’t think that in this case simplicity is a main selling point of the product - it’s not priced that way *because* it’s simpler to use.
That said, I do think that the pricing strategy has something to do with simplicity - the 30,000 price tag of the platinum anchors the price of their 4,000 “standard” model. It makes it somewhat easier to justify spending a few grand because you say, “hey, compared to the $30k model, this one’s a great value!”
Interestingly, other manufacturers smell the need for faux minimalist, savagely expensive status phones:
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/cellphones/serene-cellphone-from-samsung-and-bang-olufsen-155610.php
This one is a bargain at just $1300.
It will be interesting to see which luxury marquees jump on this pony. Rolex, perhaps? Porsche? Tiffany?
Somewhere, an old French woman is preparing her knitting.