The Inventor’s Curse

Inventors and designers are burdened with a curse. It’s hard to accept things as they are. They can see a better way.

Anyone might insert a magnetic strip backwards by accident. Normal people flip it around and go about their day. But inventors are tormented by the experience, unable to let it pass. They snap into a rapid-fire line of questioning: what just went wrong? Was it user error? Or was it the machine’s fault? (They always blame the machine first.)

So they ask the next question: where exactly did the machine go astray? Perhaps it required the human to fail in order to learn the machine’s rules. Or perhaps it neglected to mold itself around the human brain, as a car’s dashboard is shaped around the human body. Or maybe it just expected more from our puny, preoccupied brains than is reasonable.

Next question. Did it have to be that way? Is there a way to avoid the error altogether?

Via this line of questioning, a better solution materializes. Maybe the card slot should have four readers so the user can insert the card in any way. (There are other ways.)

Henceforth, every time the machine rejects a magnetic card they curse in the knowledge that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Steal This Idea

Steal This Idea is a catharsis of such experiences, collected over the years.

Philosophically, Steal this Idea is the anti-patent. The patent mindset says that ideas are precious, scarce possessions to be jealously hoarded. The Steal This Idea philosophy is that good ideas are not scarce, but a natural product of the course of inquiry described above. We believe it’s better to put unused ideas out in the wild where they might benefit companies and customers, than to keep them locked up.

We believe that stealing good designs is good, especially when you don’t have the resources to do better. And what’s even better than stealing a good design is picking it apart and putting together a new and improved one.

So, if you happen to have influence over any of the products these ideas apply to, we invite you to pilfer at will, extend and improve what you find here. Acknowledgement is appreciated but not necessary. If you know someone who is involved in these products, send them a link.

And if you have ideas you long to see realized and are willing to write it up, contact: ideastosteal @ stealthisidea.com.

About the Editor

StealThisIdea is run by Philip Haine, user experience architect and president of Obvious Design, a San Francisco consultancy specializing in product vision and interactive product design, founded in 1997.

I have been designing products since the mid-80’s, first as a software engineer, then purely as a designer. You may have touched some of the work if you used Palm Desktop for the Mac (nee Claris Organizer), ClarisImpact, Claris Emailer, the Gap or Adobe online stores, PalmOS devices after 1999 or QuickBooks 2006. (See also: project history.)