Convergence and Divergence

On the one hand, the smartphone has become that all-in-one, Swiss army knife kind of device. It has a calendar, camera, music player, compass...and oh yeah, it can also be used to make calls!

That's convergence for you.

On the other hand, there's the PC/laptop whose functionality split into multiple devices, each dedicated for just one purpose. So there's the Kindle for reading; iPad for playing games and surfing; smart TV for watching movies and so on.

That's divergence.

These trends seem strange at first...since they are the opposites of each other. Until, that is, someone tells you the pattern behind what diverges and what converges. Here's how Ben Thompson put it:
“The divergent effects of the iPhone and iPad make total sense when looked at from a human-centered perspective. The phone is often the only device you have when out-and-about, so the more capable the better; the iPad is usually used when stationary, when it’s more conceivable to have multiple devices at hand...And, if one has a choice, why wouldn’t one want to use the best possible tool for the job?”

Seems kind of obvious when someone puts it like that, doesn’t it?

Comments

  1. KumarAugust 3, 2013 at 2:22 PM

    So these devices are not only instrumental in aiding in want we wish to do, but also helpful in spending some time in analyzing why their application ways converge or diverge. :-)

    There was a time when in India you don't discuss advantages and limitations of the products you wish to buy. You book for the only 'good' product/service available such as a car, or watch, or scooter, or (can you believe this) a fridge, telephone connection... and wait. And then wait some more!

    Further to analysis, I would say, these days, the designers get the advantage of feedback from the users real quick. Maybe not feedback really but 'sensing' of the buyers' mood. Newer products surfacing with better features or methods is no surprise.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more