Multi-purpose’d
Posted by We've all been hearing the drumbeat around the popularity of "single purpose" apps as the next great thing. So indulge me a singular focus (excuse the pun) for this post, and let me share some thoughts about the power of multi-purpose.
Take a look at this photo. How many of us in the US have a sink like this in their home? The half bath in our 1908 flat sports one of these physical temples of single use metaphor. Separate spouts for hot and cold—chose one to wash your hands, or fill the basin with a mix of the two to achieve your optimal temperature. Originally intended to save on hot water (and the need for special plumbing upgrades), it seems quite antiquated now, if not downright silly. Winston Churchill would have agreed with you: upon encountering his first single spout sink during a visit to Moscow in 1942, he was completely enamored of the modern convenience of water "mingled to exactly the temperature one desired.
Churchill strikes me as having been a multi-use kind of fellow. As the drawbacks of the quaint two-faucet system emerge in the light of modern fixtures, so too do the limitations of software and apps that fall into the same—solving the problem with a metaphor that might be an improvement, but missing the opportunity to make it both simple (on the surface) and elegant (letting the users use the tools in new or multi-purpose ways). After all, we can't just keep adding a barrage single-purpose apps to our devices... can we?
I'd love to hear your thoughts — have we gone too far into single-purpose land?
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