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What UX from 1989 can teach us
How important is the user context when designing amazing products?
Let me take you back to a time before iPhones, Game of Thrones and Netflix. The year is 1989. The hairstyles are big and curly. The earrings are huge. George H. W. Bush is sworn in as the 41st president of the United States. A Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Berlin Wall comes down. Madonna is singing “Like a Prayer” and movies like “Good morning, Vietnam” and “Die hard” have been released.
Around that time, three company’s, Nintendo, Sega and Atari, released handheld game consoles. The first of their kind. Before that, kids had to go outside and play, and adults commuting had to read books or talk to the person sitting next to them. Crazy stuff.
Nintendo released the Game Boy, Sega the Game Gear and Atari released Lynx. Both the Game Gear and the Lynx had full-color backlit screens, a total of 4096 colors. The Game Boy had 4 shades of gray on a greenish screen and it was not backlit. The Game Gear and Lynx had nice handles where the user could hold the console and control the buttons. The Game Boy was unergonomic and tiny.
Based on his information, which game console would you buy? Hint. One of the consoles sold 180,7 million copies while the other ones sold 3 and 10,67 million copies.
While the Game Gear and Lynx were technologically superior in every way, the Game Boy was the one that sold 180,7 million units. It was the best selling console in the 20th century.
Why?
The User Experience.
The team at Nintendo under the lead of Gunpei Yokoi had no professional training in design or user experience. Gunpei Yokoi barely had a degree in electronics, but he was very creative, finding new ways to use old technology. In his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David Epstein…
