I’m going to get really concrete for a change, and talk about the apparent design philosophies and approaches of Apple Watch vs Pebble Time and Pebble Time Steel.

Disclosure: I have a very strong preference for Pebble, I predict they are going to eat Apple’s lunch, and I hope they do eat Apple’s lunch. I hope it happens because I see in these competing products competing ideals of good design producing two very different products. The case study will ripple through the design industry, and if things work out like I hope, it will have a corrective effect.

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When designers do what people think they do — and concern themselves primarily with aesthetics or thrilling novel features — instead of doing their job and thinking about the design experientially — that is, in terms of people and how they think and act and feel in order to unconceive and reconceive problems — they make stuff people love to talk about and obsess over, but which under-perform for users, which translates into immediate or eventual under-performing in the market.

Compared to Apple Watch, Pebble Time is inferior sculpture, but infinitely superior design.

And every time I look at either,