When did technology last actually make your life easier?
Good technology works for people, not the other way round. A calm reflection on what tools really need to deliver — and what they don't.
When did technology last actually make your life easier? I don't mean that as a trigger question, and not as cultural critique either. I genuinely ask myself this regularly when I sit in front of my devices in the morning and count how many tools I've already operated today before having my first sensible thought.
The yardstick I apply
I often think about what makes good technology. For me the answer is clear: it has to work for people, not the other way round. That is a simple sentence, but it is surprisingly rarely fulfilled in practice. Too often I see systems that turn their users into secretaries. Tools that demand inputs nobody needs. Interfaces that ask the user for decisions only because the software itself doesn't want to make any.
When I ask myself which technology has actually made my life easier in recent years, I land on a few sober examples. They aren't products with big logos. They are things that just work, and in doing so make you forget there is code behind them.
Three examples I anchor this on
A reliable cloud storage that simply syncs files without me having to think about it. I stopped doing backups manually years ago, because a well-configured system does it better than I ever would. That is a clear win in time and peace of mind.
A digital calendar that doesn't fall apart across multiple devices when two appointments get entered at the same time. Sounds trivial. It isn't. Most calendar systems have weaknesses at exactly this point that you only notice when an important appointment falls out of a proposal.
A simple command-line script that does in ten seconds what used to take fifteen minutes of menu clicks. To me, that is the very essence of good technology. It makes the specific short. And it disappears from my head as soon as it has run.
What unites these three examples is not their cleverness. It is their invisibility. Good technology doesn't revolve around itself. It revolves around what I actually want to do, and stays in the background as long as possible.
Why so many tools do the opposite
In over twenty years of software development I have built much that came closer to this ideal, and some that was a long way from it. Looking back, the difference was usually organisational, not technical.
Tools that turn people into secretaries often come about because teams lack the discipline to leave features out. Every single department brings in its requirement, every requirement produces a button, and at the end you have an interface that looks like a cockpit even though users only wanted to walk through a list. That isn't a design failure, that is a failure of judgement.
Another pattern: tools that promise maximum flexibility and forget that flexibility is always paid for in complexity. If I offer a system that can do anything, then at the start it can do nothing until the user configures it. That is a win for five per cent of users and a wall for the other 95 per cent. And yet such systems keep getting built and sold, because flexibility looks good in demos.
What guides me today
When I build products myself — which happens regularly, in the agency and in my own small projects — I have a simple test. I ask myself: will this feature take something off the user, or pile something on? Both are legitimate answers. Features may pile something on, as long as they take a lot off in return. But if a feature takes nothing off and only piles on, it doesn't belong in the product.
That test has made my product work quieter over the past few years. Fewer new buttons. More clean defaults. Fewer options, but options that mean something. That sells worse in a keynote, but it works noticeably better in everyday life.
My conclusion
For me, the question 'when did technology last actually make your life easier?' is a quiet compass. It separates what is currently loud from what actually carries. The answer, in my case, is rarely the latest tool. It is almost always the thing that has worked quietly for years without me having to read a roadmap for it.
Perhaps that is the real progress in technology that we easily lose sight of in the hype cycle. Not the new. But the thing that is so well built that you eventually stop noticing it at all. That is rare. But it is what I work for every day.
Questions I often hear on this
A few things readers regularly ask me about this topic.
How do you bring this stance into your own projects?+
With discipline in leaving things out. I regularly run "feature funerals" — functions nobody uses get cut. That's uncomfortable, but it makes the remaining functions noticeably better.
Isn't "fewer options" also patronising the user?+
I see it differently. Good defaults aren't coercion, they're a gift. If someone needs another option, it can be there — but tucked away, not in the main menu. Most users are grateful when someone has thought ahead.
Which tools have survived the test with you the longest?+
I currently use a handful of classics, more quiet than loud: a clean cloud storage, a calendar that does what it should, and lots of small self-written scripts. None of it would fill a keynote — but all of it has worked for years.
How do you decide which tools to use?+
I do it like this: I ask what a tool actually takes off me. If it ends up costing more attention than it saves, out it goes. The result is that I work with a very small stack, but one that has held for years.
Isn't this a plea for less innovation?+
No, the opposite. To me, the actual innovation is when technology runs in the background without disruption. That's harder to build than another colourful button. I find it more exciting, not more conservative.
If you'd like to discuss this in more depth
I advise individual IT leaders under OnlyOle — one to one, without agency overhead. If this stays on your mind and you want to sort it out in your own context, just give me a call or drop me a short message.