As much as we engineers feel that pure technology advances trump all, we’re reminded of the powerful impact human nature has on the adoption of the technology we create. I’m returning from a spring break vacation season where it seems that EVERYONE I see in airports and hotels is carrying around either an iPhone or an iPad. While the iPad in particular certainly presents an example of elegant engineering, as a computing device it’s not particularly groundbreaking. There’s not that much you can do with the tablet that you can’t already do with your laptop, and some would even say it offers less functionality than a laptop. Yet its consumer appeal is undeniable. Why? Because of the Apple brand? Perhaps. Actually, I’d point more to the power of the interface as the true breakthrough here. The intuitiveness, the bright screen, the light packaging all combine to appeal to us as humans in ways that can extend far beyond advances in engineering performance. And if we think of past great leaps forward in consumer electronics, they often don’t stem from a performance but rather to interface innovation, such as the circle control wheel on the iPod, the one-click simplicity of iTunes, or even the early Macintosh operating system. There were other offerings that competed with each of the above, and which were sometimes superior from an engineering perspective. However, the more engaging human interface of these examples proved to be the winning advantage.


The test industry should draw (at least) two lessons from this. Of course, the first lesson is that this latest burst of consumer innovation in smart phones, tablets, netbooks, and the like is good for business, because it has coincided with the rise of another generation of ICs that need to be tested. The test industry is driven by innovation in consumer electronics, as every new round of development is accompanied by new cycles of device characterization for the next evolution of chips. Further, Apple’s innovation has shown the semiconductor industry that it’s not a zero sum game – the iPod nano created a whole new category, as did the iPhone, and, most recently, the iPad. Consumer demand doesn’t just shift from a netbook to a tablet – it expands and creates higher volumes of purchases and therefore increases the demand for semiconductors.

The second lesson is that the T&M industry’s attempts to improve instrument interfaces, with touch screens and color displays, is important to our engineering customers, even if they don’t necessarily articulate that during a Voice of the Customer exercise. As people become more comfortable and familiar with these new user interfaces, they expect all their devices – cars, washing machines and even test instruments – to meet the same ease of use standard. We must pay more attention to the way our customers interact with our measurement tools in order to make the tools as powerful and useful as possible.