In Don Norman’s recent article on sociable design, he states that “No object is an island, entire of itself”, however “each piece is designed as if it were an island, independent of actual usage.” The design of how products work together, otherwise known as compatibility, is a prime example of this disconnect. Often how a device works with other objects in a users’ environment is neglected during product design.

In the recent past, we would not have expected many devices to work together at all, let alone seamlessly. For example, cars were largely designed in isolation from portable technologies, such as music players and cell phones. With the recent significant advances in mobile technologies and computer networks, our expectations have changed. Now we would like the operation of these devices to be integrated and we’re often disappointed by the lack of thought put into how these products work together.

Many problems in compatibility design can be found, including:

• MP3 players and cars – An MP3 player can be used in a car by connecting it with a wire and operating it through the device’s controls. This setup is inelegant and even dangerous, as it fails to take advantage of the car controls as a way of operating the device.
• Laptop and printer Bluetooth connections - Networking technologies, such as wireless broadband and Bluetooth, promise easy connections between devices. In the case of Bluetooth connected printers, these promises are broken when the connection between the printer and a laptop fails to support multiple page printing tasks.

The few products that get compatibility right do so because successful integration is a key component of their feature set. This creates a motivation for the product designers to get compatibility right. For example, TiVo is noticeably designed to support good compatibility with cable and satellite TV systems and home networks. The installation of this DVR system is as automatic as possible and guides the user through setup in a way most users would understand. Maintenance tasks, such as reconnecting to a network or retrieving TV station settings, are also easy for users to accomplish through TiVo’s intuitive user interface.

Companies should still examine compatibility even if it is not a core feature of a product. Compatibility is part of the total user experience of a product and, therefore, part of a product’s design. Certainly getting the compatibility user experience right is difficult, but time should be spent on this effort to ensure the design doesn’t put the product on its own design island. As technology advances, it’s even more important for designers to consider compatibility as part of the design or else companies risk being left behind.

Hopefully more and more companies will consider design compatibility in the future. It’s a win-win for everyone: the user who buys the product and the manufacturer who produces a product people actively want to buy. After all, products are not islands unto themselves, but live in the context of society as a whole.

What examples do you have of good compatibility design?