/* ---- Google Analytics Code Below */

Sunday, March 31, 2019

A Look at Digital Buttons: Amazon Dash

Below is the first piece in TheVerge on 'Buttons', which I loosely define as simple as possible interfaces to otherwise complex processes.    Probably the best known is the Amazon Dash. I remember discussing it with folks from Amazon at our innovation center not long after they started selling things other than books online.   Not claiming we got the idea first,  but we certainly had discussed having a re-order button for detergent on a washing machine long before.  After that we got a beta version, and I have been using it ever since in my Smart Home.  Later we talked about having a 'button' on a process model to measure when things were done.  Or to use to vote or bid on something.  Using one of Amazon's proto-buttons. Which you can probably get cheap now.  But that never happened.  Still much like the button as a kind of IOT simple-as-possible interface.  Let me know if you want to talk that.  Nice piece below, and more upcoming I will comment on.

The Amazon Dash button was a physical interface to digital shopping
Button of the Month: Amazon Dash button    By Chaim Gartenberg   @cgartenberg

In today’s digital age, it can sometimes feel like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives devices. Button of the Month is a column that looks at some of these buttons and switches on devices both old and new to appreciate how we interact with our devices on a physical, tactile level.

Shopping on Amazon is a vastly digital experience. Until the last few years, there hasn’t been a physical way to go and buy things from Amazon. For the overwhelming majority of Amazon purchases, there’s still no checkout lane, no aisles to browse, no physical interactions at all — famously, the company’s “One Click” software removes nearly all barriers between wanting something and buying it.

Amazon’s now-defunct Dash buttons — small, Wi-Fi connected pods with a single button on them that would reorder a specific product — were meant to change that when they were introduced in 2015. They offered a physical manifestation of that traditional Amazon experience: buy what you need with just one click. ....."

No comments: