Amazon Dash Button
amazon.com
amazon.com
> From an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in the November 1995 issue of Inc. Technology. Vonnegut was asked to discuss his feelings about living in an increasingly computerized world.
>> I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I'd never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterward I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “Okay, I'll send you the pages.” Then I go down the steps and my wife calls, “Where are you going?” “Well,” I say, “I'm going to buy an envelope.” And she says, “You're not a poor man. Why don't you buy a thousand envelopes? They'll deliver them, and you can put them in the closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it's my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I'm secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I've had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you any different.
I feel like it describes some of my days pretty well. But another part of me thinks he's writing from a very privileged position, and doesn't (want to) recognize it.
Quite the opposite I think. Our machines can 'already' work well enough to provide free food, shelter and education to every person on earth. Even still, we produce food for 10B people yet hunger is a problem.
If everyone was given free food, shelter and education, then everyone would fart around and get bored until some of them hackers gather to build a space-ship and others join in. Utopia? probably. But the real problem is broken distribution model which real means broken governance model.
Secondly, are you sure all work can be done by currently-existing machines and people willing to do that work for fun? For example, maintenance on a broken sewage system. I think there's going to be some jobs that machines can't yet do, no one wants to do, and yet still need to be done.
Oh, and it's also remarkably close to this [1], which I didn't know about until now, and now want to try. Thanks for your accidental character transposition. It has led to good things.
>> These images are backward projections of modern work patterns. And they are false. Before capitalism, most people did not work very long hours at all. The tempo of life was slow, even leisurely; the pace of work relaxed. Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure. When capitalism raised their incomes, it also took away their time. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that working hours in the mid-nineteenth century constitute the most prodigious work effort in the entire history of humankind.
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
This fact works counter to the studied "just a dude out observing the fullness of humanity" vibe of the paragraph.
So for me the piece is very unstable, tilting back and forth between these two poles. Perhaps that's why I remembered it across 20 years.
Keep in mind the excerpt you just read was written by a professional writer. A good one at that. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's got a quality where even if nobody told you it was written by a writer, you could just tell.
No flowery prose. Just simple description. But highlighting many little things and quirks that most people leave out of descriptions of events. Without those, his errand reads a bit like this: "I write on a typewriter. When I'm done I mark it up in pencil, then I ask a freelance typist if she's got time to do a clean manuscript for me. Then I have to go down to the newsstand to buy an envelope to send it off in. I like the roundabout way of doing it"
Not quite as fun is it?
edit: the style reminds me a lot of reading Gaiman's blogposts about his life
There was an interview or podcast (some sort of video) with Ira Glass about this same idea. He describes a man waking up and getting coffee, the most mundane activities, with incredible suspense. You really have to appreciate that sort of ability. It's not even apparent until someone else points out how boring it would be if stated differently.
"Attitude is the difference between an adventure and an ordeal," said somebody wiser than I.
So, were there any???
2. The sibling that notes Vonnegut's privileged: Probably. But something tells me so are most of the Amazon Prime members. http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/amazon-attracting-high...
3. I loved walking and commuting on the T in Boston. I got time to watch or interact with people. Being present in the world is a form of productivity for anyone creating things for people.
Beautifully said.
Easy to say that, sitting on a Hugo award and the subsequent career of Kurt Vonnegut.
The whimsy of Vonnegut betrays the truth that too many of us suffer from too little time in the day to create genuine, shareable moments with one another. Technology can help beat back that tide by simplifying the tedious, and little by little, we may find ourselves making time to be more present in our everyday lives.
Technology should be celebrated, and not feared.
I disagree that modern life is somehow unnatural or participating in it requires some form of submission. Providing for our needs in a more convenient fashion is one of the pillars of civilization.
I understand that not everyone in this world has the luxury of free time, but if one has the ability to shop on Amazon, making time away from work and the internet is almost definitely an option. It's thinking like that which will hurtle us towards an Idiocracy-like reality.
It is precisely the post-industrialized culture of consumption, and economy of progress that is robbing individuals of our free time.
When did laundry and cooking and doing work at home cease to be a social function and instead move into the sphere of "work"?
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Do you realize that you're basically implying that housewifes were chilling at home while their husbands were doing the real work? Home work has always been real work, but us men didn't really feel it before we had to do more of it due to gender equality.
housework is indeed real work, real labor. But post-industrialized societies have worked to strip joy from all chores. The idea of of a housewife is a good example of this — A woman alone in a house cooking for another person, cleaning a vast amount of things that endlessly collect dirt. So long as we don't reach the singularity there will be chores to do, mouths to feed and things to clean. Is it easier to spend all our waking hours devising "technologies" to "simplify" life or is it easier to re-evaluate what a simple life is and embrace that labor is a part of life.
Don't confuse the two issues here – the ability to let one person stay home, in a traditional 2-parent household was a great thing. Expecting that to always be done and always be a woman was terrible and sexist.
But, now, are we really saying the "liberated housewives" are any more free? They're even more constrained by the need to earn a paycheck so that their families can remain at the same level as their parents or grandparents were able to achieve on one income. Yes, they're on closer (but not equal) footing with men, but I don't think I'd really say we've increased the freedom of anyone here.
Than we did historically? We do.
Things that I am forced to do, I do not consider "free time", although for some reason anti-technologists like to consider at-home labor to be "free time", so they can make it look like pre-industrialization people had less work than we do today.
That said, with every passing year there is measurably less stuff that I have to waste time doing, mostly thanks to the power of the internet.
There's a sad irony in the image of first world citizen who can't waste time cooking so they consume large amounts highly processed ready-made food from places like trader joe's and sits down to watch Game of Thrones for three hours and browse pinterest.
Alternatively, I don't waste time cooking and instead spend that time eating with friends at a restaurant and not having anyone burdened by the cleanup afterwards (well except for the staff paid to do so).
strictly speaking, the only thing that's necessary is for me to have food in my stomach. A lot of people enjoy cooking (and I have the luxury of being able to do so with close friends sometimes), but there's little point in romanticizing me heating some water and pouring in pasta in a bowl when I'm by myself. As others have said, a lot of people don't have the luxury of being able to make i.e. cooking and cleaning a social activity.
Beyond the whole socio-economic "guy/gal working 2 jobs" thing (Why do we think working 2 full-time jobs solely to survive is OK?!) , there's even the "person who doesn't really have many friends at the moment". I know some people who find themselves in such situations after moving to a different country for example.
As for things like cleaning, I think the meta-solution to that is to live in a small place and not own many things. Gives me more time to watch game of thrones (or browse HN ;))
Many people enjoy e.g. watching TV than cooking, and there's nothing wrong with that. More power to them.
Due to a broken governance model that the world uses, we have poverty; technology is already advanced enough that most of us don't even need a job. Humanity is producing enough for everyone's need (but not greed, like gandhi said) but we haven't a fair distribution. Getting a job is our way of distribution of wealth.
Female literacy levels is a good leading indicator of social and economic development[2].
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/hans-rosling-washing-machi...
[2]] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_impact_of_female_...
Except that so many of those genuine moments can't be created with any sort of precision. They happen exactly because they are outside of what was planned.
We suffer from a lack of time because we have too much crap planned or demanded of us. Abstracting away all the small things sounds wonderful, but it's exactly that pursuit of efficiency above all else that is killing us.
Here in Norway online shopping involves finding an online store that sells what you need (there's no site that sells everything, like Amazon, here), going through a cumbersome sign-up/payment process, paying a lot of money for the shipping costs, waiting several days and having to go to the post office unless the package is really small (or if you're willing to pay even more for premium shipping).
I really don't get why so many people here dislike the idea behind Dash Button. Buying essential shit isn't fun, it's a burden that needs to be done. I can't understand why removing the hassle of purchasing stuff like toilet paper and detergent is "dystopian consumer hell". Dystopian consumer hell is what we have here in Norway, where we need to physically go to the store and buy the same stuff over and over and over again.
Welcome to HN, where some people think they just have to dislike everything they see on top to show how "unique" they are.
Businesses want to sell tons of crap anyway, so I'm never surprised to see harsh (but often constructive!) criticism on these boards.
I think Amazon has the right idea. Just launch products and see how they go, what you learn, and if they stick. Very interesting company to watch operate.
You might get properly funded roads; that is if they don't squander it between the time they lie and promise to use it for that and when it comes time to do road repair.
I saw this old blog post recently, supporting your assertion: https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-r...
Basically, underground rail construction in US costs much more per kilometer than in other countries, and people in the comment section claim that the same holds true for other types of infrastructure construction, like bridges and highways.
If Germany's tax rate starts at 40% from 40,000 EUR and California from $200,000; those are not equivalent.
My marginal tax rate in the UK is 45% but I take home 75% of what I invoice.
The max personal tax rate is 47.2%, but that includes a 8.2% pension contribution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
It's hard to directly compare though, since we have really high excise taxes/VAT, especially for things like cars.
But I believe your employer pays an amount equal to about 20% of your gross income as pension fund payments. I don't know if USA has similar "hidden" costs which makes direct comparison of grass salary difficult.
"making the total Social Security tax 12.4% of wages and the total Medicare tax 2.9%."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Insurance_Contributions...
Yes, there's a cost, but tax rates in the US aren't ultra low compared to every other country in the world.
It's not so much how much money you spend, but what you spend it on that is the real difference.
Add your health care costs to that 12% and I think you'll find Canada has the cheaper rate, and you still get to take advantage of many (not all) of the same credits a typical American can.
You're also forgetting that the US doesn't have a national sales tax or high taxes on gasoline.
I would agree that the highest tax states in the US aren't that different than the lowest tax states in Canada (income tax only), my own person experience tells me that the US, on average, has a much lower tax burden than countries like Canada. And many jobs pay a higher salary.
Also the US brackets kick in at higher incomes. In Canada the highest bracket (29%) is over $136K. In the US, the highest bracket is 35%, but it doesn't kick-in until you earn more than $375K per year.
I easily have more disposable income in the US than I did in Canada, even after taking into account insurance costs. Even living in a high-tax US state.
I would rather be paid enough and have the choice of where to put my money, instead of the government making all of those choices for me.
There is something to be said about not being 100K in debt after getting your degree and not having to go bankrupt if say you were diagnosed with cancer in your early to mid 20's.
Sorry but i rather not to have parents have to work their arse off just to send me to college, or hope they have enough money to treat me if i get sick just as i fall of their coverage plan.
I also would like for my self or my wife to be able to go of work for a year and raise a child without having to be afraid of losing income or job security.
In other words, you aren't entitled to people's money with no strings attached; you have to work for it. Using institutionalized violence to get what you want is lazy and immoral.
I see an opportunity there :)
How often do you need laundry detergent? Every two weeks? If this button saves you ten seconds each time, that's a total of 4.3 minutes per year saved. And that assumes you buy the stuff one at a time instead of getting a bunch at once.
Amazon as a whole is great because you can use it for so much stuff. Saving time on a rare purchase is almost pointless, but saving time on all your rare purchases put together can be significant. But this button thingy is inherently single-product.
This is basically the ordering-side equivalent of when you buy three small items from Amazon and they get shipped to you in three separate gigantic boxes filled with vast amounts of padding. Maybe it makes sense when you see the big picture, but I can't help but scream "why??"
1. Find my iPhone (I don't carry it with me around the house)
2. Enter my PIN to unlock it
3. Open Safari
4. Navigate to Amazon.com
5. Type in their search bar and browse through the results
6. Click on the product I want
7. Add it to my cart
8. Go to check out and confirm settings (e.g. delivery speed)
9. Place order
It's actually way more cumbersome than it has to be.
From the description of it, I think the button wouldn't work if you don't carry a phone with you, as it depends on it.
When I'm in the privacy of my own home, and I'm not expecting guests, you'd be hard pressed to find me dressed at all, let alone in anything that has pockets ;)
But wait, how do you handle nudists?
Out of clean clothes today,
Also laundry detergent,
Imagine surprise face on UPS man when I open door.
"Get me some clean clothes!"
out of detergent, as well.
Hi UPS man.
Push button like a hamster
When I need something
There was an article posted about usage of bands in Disney world. The idea is to have technology integrated with you such that the idea of interacting with a generic computer shouldn't exist.
There is a better solution than spreading branded landfill buttons across your house!
It takes more than 10 seconds to go to the store and get detergent. I suppose it'll save the 30 seconds it takes to order detergent on a phone, but the big gain is that it's RIGHT THERE so you can't forget to order it and then find yourself dead in the water and have to go to the store to get detergent instead of wait 2 days for amazon to deliver it.
As for the big gain being that it's right there, I figured everybody's phones are right there too. Apparently not everybody does that. Seems like if you really find this to be a problem, you could just keep your phone in your pocket.
Edit: and the answer is pretty clear, I think. If people actually go for this, it'll be a massive advantage for Amazon. It essentially banishes competition permanently for people who use the button regularly. It'll also make people much less price sensitive. So I completely understand why Amazon would try to push this. I just don't understand why anyone else finds it interesting besides that.
Could apps be better? Sure. Can any app get as good as a button that's already right there when you realize you need a replacement? I don't see how.
There's an obvious reason Amazon is doing this: they're trying to continue to grow their share of the consumer's brain. When someone thinks about shopping, Amazon wants to be on the very short list of that thinking. So this button is a relatively inexpensive way to keep doing that. Get into someone's house, get into someone's mind, and try to show yourself as innovative.
When the time to complete tasks changes by an order of magnitude - even going from seconds down to milliseconds - our behavior tends to change. We easily accept this notion with developer related tasks such as compiling and testing. I don't see a difference here.
Now I come out with a new product where the entire pitch is, that build-and-compile you do once or twice a month now takes one second instead of ten! Oh, and it only works for one project. If you work on multiple projects, buy multiple products.
Would this be worthwhile? I don't see it.
Developer tasks like compiling and testing benefit from small efficiency gains because we do them constantly. Or the efficiency gains allow us to move from a model where we do them rarely to a model where we do them constantly. Neither one applies here. You won't buy detergent any more frequently with this button, and it's not something you do often.
- Wipe your hands from moisture/whatever you had on them.
- Find your phone in your pocket.
- Orient it.
- Unlock it.
- Exit whatever app you left running in the foreground.
- Open the app drawer.
- Find the ordering app.
- Click through several layers of UI to get to the right product.
And there's a bigger picture outside of comparing the convenience between using this little button as opposed to mobile apps, but that's off topic for this branch of the conversation, if you're interested IMHO & my brief reasoning, read this other brach[2] (also because DRY).
(1): Optimally you realize you are about to run out of something before it happens. [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299505
... it's about creating a barrier to exit so that your customers won't comparison shop for different brands of detergent.
I don't know what the things I used in the dinner I just prepared costs. I only know roughly how much my weekly grocery bill comes to (it's all delivered - the order is auto-populated by Ocado's algorithms, so if I don't do anything I get a reasonable default set of products based on what I usually buy). And I like it that way.
IMHO the essence of this product is neither about enforcing brand loyalty nor saving time.
1- Brand loyalty benefits well established brands, yes, so amazon probably got big companies on board by offering brand placement on their marketing material among other benefits.
2- Saving time (and cognitive flow/energy) benefits consumers, yes. There is some risk to follow brand reputation instead of product quality, agree, but that is a manageable risk, so amazon can potentially get consumers on board.
The essence and reason of why this product/service came to be, answers to one question only; 'How does amazon benefit?' and it is brilliant.
From my POV this little button is not just a way to introduce an enhanced experience to an existing and growing consumer behavior[1] that would result in greater sales for amazon; more than a product they introduced a service/platform[2] that can be seamlessly integrated to new home appliances, so amazon is effectively expanding its presence into a diverse and conveniently positioned custom/customizable 'points of sale' inside people's homes, making itself more and more ubiquitous as time goes by and more companies and individual innovators adopt their new service/platform, and their investment to accomplish this was little compared to the alternative of investing in manufacturing their own home appliances, but that's not brilliant, that's only natural and expected from a company like amazon.
It also places amazon's brand on not all but many people's minds as a high-tech high-quality home appliances brand by association to the actual home appliances brands, and amazon is not really manufacturing that kind of hardware (...yet), that's the brilliant part (an opportunity that they may or may never exploit, either because non-compete agreements or because it wouldn't make sense for their business plans or because Jeff Bezos decides not to because reasons, an opportunity nonetheless).
[1]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-food-delivery-1/... [2]: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service
Its about the API and what new purchasing flows will be created by eager startups, resulting in new MRR for Amazon.
I really like that it ignores the repeated pushes.
> Unless you elect otherwise, Dash Button responds only to your first press until your order is delivered.
Another good use case is that I can head to the store as soon as I realize we're out of something, and by the time I get there, the list has everything else that she thought of.
Do this: pretend you own Tide. Do you want people pressing a button that sends you money for more tide, or do you want them going here: https://www.google.com/search?q=laundry+aisle&espv=2&biw=144...
Amazon have had a few "ridiculous" ideas (e.g. drone delivery, 1 hour delivery, pre-emptive shipping). I think they know these ideas are a stretch but it gets people thinking in a new way and out of it there may be a few more solid ideas. Product marketing by annealing if you will.
One of the primary rules of running a business is to make it as easy as possible for people to give you their money. This makes it ridiculously easy.
Because it's a tangible reminder that you need to buy new X and it removes all the barriers entirely to that. It's wildly convenient.
Might I remind you:
- Locate mobile device
- Swipe/Unlock mobile device
- Locate Safari App/Amazon app
- Tap and wait for Safari to load
- Access amazon.com
- Type in 'X'
- Locate results and click on option
- Press 'one click purchase' for irony
vs.
- Press a button.
If the use case was something like, push this button and dinner arrives, I'd say it's fantastic. If it was something like, push this button on your phone to re-order detergent, I'd say that's pretty sensible. But a physical button to order an infrequently ordered product makes no sense to me.
Even for Amazon it's cheap, and quickly pays for itself.
The line between physical and digital is blurring more every day.
Or are you just being hyperbolic?
I don't know about you, but I make a trip to the grocery store about 1.5x every week anyways. I definitely would never use an online food/grocery service; I prefer to see the lettuce I'm buying when I take it off the shelf.
So, given that I'm already at the grocery store something like 80 times a year, and assuming I need to buy more laundry detergent 5 times a year, that's 16 opportunities for me to not pay Amazon shipping and just pick up a jug of detergent when I'm going to be out shopping anyways.
Assuming this isn't an April 1 joke and I just got trolled, hard, this is definitely a solution in search of a problem.
If so, what happens when, say, your apples come bruised?
Me: these apples are bruised
Tesco man: sorry sir, let me refund that straight away. And keep the apples, you could make a pie with them.
Though in five years of online grocery shopping I've only returned a couple of items. The apples have made it all the way unbruised from New Zealand after all, four more miles is nothing.
That sounds like a much worse experience than simply going to the market and picking out unbruised apples.
Or are you just being hyperbolic?
Tough call, but I guess I'd rather pay less and get quality fruit every time.
Shopping takes maximum 45 minutes and I like browsing the different cuts of meat at the market and/or my local butcher.
It is predictable enough (and with options for "always include" and "never automatically include") that we quite often don't bother adjusting the order.
My grocery shopping have never been less stressful.
I hadn't noticed that they help you to remember your order and try to deliver what you normally have. Is this automatic then. What happens if you are out of the country for a couple of weeks?
Is this kind of service not common in the US then? It seems to be massive in the UK now.
Had you gone to the market you would not have bruised apples.
What's your point? Neither of us knows which products are here to stay and which aren't.
Did the early humans really need wheels, when they were already fit enough to run and carry weights?
You may make a trip to the grocery store about 1.5x every week, but I "never" go to the grocery store any more - it's all delivered. I can not imagine going back to shopping in person other than the odd "emergency" purchase.
More importantly to cover the various other uses I could see for this, such as printer toner, just the grocery store would be insufficient.
This is a solution in search of a different demographics than you. Like me.
Maybe that's your daily pattern, but for example in my case, this almost never happens. I just don't sit on my couch thinking about home maintenance; I have too much other, more interesting stuff to do. Phones have really annoying, user-hostile UI, so I don't even use mine much at home. They are good enough for commuting, when I can't really do anything else except maybe read a book, so I schedule tasks I can do from my spartphone for the to/from-work route.
Pretty much every other time the phone will be in my pocket and the value would be less. But even then it'd mean fishing my phone out, unlocking, starting an app instead of just pushing a button. Not torture by any means, but if I can just stick a button there and not have to think about it again, then awesome.
With this system instead of adding an item to your list to process later it's processed immediately.
It's definitely a common thing for me and my fiancee - we're not forgetful people, just busy. The less disruptions and banal activity in my life the better.
Why not order it on your phone at the moment you notice that you're running low? You can do that right now, without a special Amazon button.
Last month I had to go to store at least twice in the morning before work because we ran out of milk and my two year old was close to having mental breakdown without cereals for breakfast. We use combination of Google Shopping Express, Walmart and Safeway delivery services - they are godsend and save us enormous amount of time. Unfortunately Amazon Fresh is not available where we live.
Having one second ordering for regular staples will marketdly improve ordering process, especially if buttons are reliable and convinient to use.
Every bottle of Tide I buy at target also means amazon just lost out on a toilet paper sale and a paper towel sale and maybe some food if its a supertarget and all that other stuff target sells. Its not amazon selling a $20 bottle of tide but preventing the target sale of a $120 shopping cart full of junk.
Is this like, what society wants though? Are we all here to be waited on hand and foot, have our every need taken care of? Do we end up being able to solve more real problems this way, or do we end in a dearth of imagination? Interesting implications - we either end up with a higher percentage of people being self-actualized or an idiotistopia a la wall-e and idiocracy.
I think I'm better off for the effort I put into things like buying detergent, walking to work and figuring out my way instead of using GMaps. It's not like I'd be worse off if I stopped doing any one of those things, but the lifestyle in aggregate where you have a button for everything does have an impact I think.
I have a hard time seeing how people can develop the schlep tolerance and planning skill to do something challenging and big if they can't remember to buy detergent.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9297279
Let's merge these two threads together and see which wins!
I did eventually get mine back in February or so. The add to shopping list feature is very convenient. I don't see this obsoleting that Echo function which is much more general purpose. (Can add anything whether you get it from Amazon or somewhere else.)
Buying groceries is a solved problem, mostly.
Clearly Amazon understands that human aspect, and credit to them for not getting stuck on the idea that if I have to go to the web site, they can up-sell while I'm there.
I don't get household supplies from Amazon now, but this is making me consider it just as soon as I've compared prices.
Eh about once every 2 months.
It's taken me 2 weeks so far to remember to get it. I go to the store almost daily. :(
> It's taken me 2 weeks so far to remember to get it. I go to the store almost daily. :(
This is a behavior that isn't going to change by having a thousand buttons all over your house. Maybe you won't ever worry about running out of detergent or dogfood again, but there's always something else. "Oh shit, I bought pasta for dinner but I forgot to buy pasta sauce!" What's the solution, get a pasta sauce button?
I see nothing wrong with dedicating a wall of my kitchen entirely to Amazon buttons for everything in my fridge and pantry. :)
As I mentioned in another comment, though, a better system would probably be to use some cheap, single-purpose wall-mountable tablet computer (probably e-Ink based, maybe even with a column of physical buttons instead of a touchscreen to bring costs down to a pittance) that one could load up with a list of products that need to be routinely reordered for a partiuclar room. If prices could be brought down considerably (if not free with Prime membership, as is being proposed for these Dash buttons), this could be pretty viable.
If I cannot check a list in 2 seconds of pulling out whatever said list is stored on, I am done.
I miss my old Palm. One push of the task list button and I could see what I needed to do next.
I don't know how anyone actually remembers to do this. I know I don't. What inevitably ends up happening is that, despite making a bunch of trips to the store, at some point I'll discover that I'm out of dog food and make a purpose-specific trip to pick some up so my dog can eat. Later that day I'll remember, when I go to do laundry, that I'm also out of detergent. Then it will be dishwasher tablets.
I live in silicon valley where all these new delivery services are being tested, and I almost never go to the store. Google Shopping Express delivers non-perishable groceries to my home within 24 hours, Instacart delivers fresh groceries within 2 hours, and Amazon delivers everything else I need within 2 days. I really want to sign up for Amazon Fresh because they deliver perishables and everything else same day, but it's a little pricey.
I hate going to the store now (especially since our local market isn't very nice - I love a good market). For me it is a big chore. I work from home so I'm rarely even "driving by" the market.
Amazon, google, and others want to enable a world where no one goes to the store (and we all order from them). It's nice not having to go to the store. Your cute calculation of 4.3 minutes saved is making assumptions that totally don't apply to people like me. I don't want to take a 30 minute experience and shave ten seconds off, I want to eliminate the trips to the store entirely.
It's fine if you don't see the need for new products, but just because you don't see the need doesn't mean there isn't one. Not saying this product has a need (I feel like I can use my smartphone) but you've completely missed the big picture of deliveries for everything. In San Francisco you can get a bento box delivered in 15 minutes for $12, and I just got a flyer for dinners delivered starting at $8.
Everyone wants to do deliveries, and once they're done by robot it will be so cheap we'll all have it.
What I don't understand is button-for-delivery for uncommonly ordered items.
You want to order detergent online? Great! Me too! But why do you need a specialized button that only does that? That's the part that makes no sense.
It's also self-selecting: if you ARE searching for the absolutely lowest price, or are price sensitive, you're not the right target audience for this kind of tech or company :)
It -does- make sense if you take it as a way to introduce not a product ("specialized button") but a platform[1] for long overdue and much needed innovation that some very influential people have started to fund and promote[2]. It is not the only way to do it, but it is amazon's way to facilitate it and in the process get some market pioneering advantages. A company like amazon doesn't have the infrastructure to start building home appliances but it required little effort for them to contribute in a way that brings them great benefits. Smart move, amazon.
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service [2]: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-food-delivery-1/...
I suspect something similar was said by the horse owner the first time they saw a car.
The choice is between having to remember to buy the product next time you go shopping, having to remember to order the product next time you are in front of the proper device, or not having to remember a thing.
Being able to move a task to 'done' as soon as it is recognized is a savings in cognitive load far more valuable than any time savings.
Then again, I am the type of person who frequently says "might as well do it now before I forget." Younger, more single people might not see the value in this sort of thing.
Perhaps you don't see the value in it, but that doesn't make it ridiculous. Why not just move along instead of complaining about a new option for those who do happen to appreciate it?
I'd use this. Every time I return from the store, there's always something I forgot to purchase. Yes, I so use a list. The problem is when, say, cooking, I actually focus on what I'm doing. When I'm running low on something, I don't rush to my phone to log it because it's an interruption that takes away from cooking (especially when there's a notification waiting for you). Amazon is providing an extremely low-friction solution that won't take your away from what you're focusing on.
The horror....
The "dystopian consumer hell" is that humans spend their time making this crap instead of, you know, something that's not a complete waste of time and resources.
The rolls are smaller, the prices are higher. Actually do the comparison. Note that box stores rotate the sales weekly between the major brands, but they each go on sale in turn each month.
Sure, maybe if that's your mindset. Personally I love going and doing the grocery shopping with my kids, and they love noodling around the supermarket, helping select things from the shelves, and it's generally a good time.
The drive to crush every interaction beyond a screen flow that sticks money into Bezos' pocket, glorified by misanthropes under the banner of "efficiency" seems more like a vision of hell to me.
We went from physical in-store cash payments to online 1-click delivery. The purchasing experience has continuously been quickened, to close the gap between the intent and the action.
Nowadays, running out of coffee capsules (for example) still requires some interaction, via your phone or your laptop. There's at least a dozen of seconds between the intent and the action.
Having a button attached to the products container doesn't only remove that intent/action gap physically but also mentally, because you're actually consuming the product at that exact moment.
The ultimate frictionless experience would be for coffee capsules to be delivered before running out of them, through a prediction system à la Google Now. But that would require some kind of physical tracking system...
Some people think it's an April fools joke. I'm not so sure. It makes sense to me.
Saying the name of what you want to buy into your smartwatch/glass/echo is going to be a lot more frictionless and scalable than putting these buttons all over your house.
"Wait, you expect me to actually PUSH A BUTTON?"
There are other services like ManPacks, Dollar Shave Club, etc that offer subscriptions to everyday essentials.
Also being individual item oriented every time inflation leaves its mark and bottles shrink in size, my subscription is cancelled and I need to make a new S+S for the "new and improved" one oz smaller bottle. And every time the mfgr decides to play games with 2-pack vs 3-pack of bottles, I gotta resubscribe again. Really annoying.
What I want from amazon is a web interface of "based on order history I seem to be using 412.345 oz of mint mouthwash per year and amazon predicts I have 20.001 oz on hand (click here to update quantity on hand) and to meet our guarantee of you having 2 weeks supply on hand at all time we're shipping you our current mint mouthwash best deal of two bottles in one box" or whatever.
I get a pretty big S+S box every month. I have not automated down to weekly purchases like toilet paper but inevitably it'll happen some day. I wonder if they'll ever have a standard reusable stackable shipping crate like peapod food containers. That must be cheaper than all this cardboard.
If it's not reasonably reliable, it's not really worth subscribing to.
[Yes] [OK] [Sure]
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This was my pet peeve with Star Trek... Always having to tell the computer to do basic shit it should just do automatically .
Not
Me: Computer do we need milk? Computer: Let me check, Yes. Me: Order some then. Computer: Ok.
They really want to find a way to have me do exactly this. "Hey I need more detergent. Press skinner-box level. Great more detergent is on it's way! Right from your favorites list on Amazon."
And frankly, that would be great and wildly convenient.
Package RFID tags with every item, and a smart fridge/smart cabinet. It's not that hard.
A retailer like Walmart might even pay for the manufacturer to install these RFID tags, as they can be used double-duty in the retailer's own inventory process.
Like you said, and intermediate step.
Just taking a moment to enjoy that the above quote would have sounded exactly "like the future" to childhood me, and yet is both true and how I live my life today.
But it's not like people can't be this, without much mental overhead. If I know it takes two days to ship something, and I use it daily, and recognize I'll be out in three days - I'm gonna push that button.
It's frictionless because it integrates perfectly with the use of the product.
How long before automatic cat-feeders automatically purchase cat food for you?
Information is here: https://www.amazon.com/oc/dash-replenishment-service
Apparently, Whirlpool washing machines and Brita water filters will be using it. This doesn't help for basics like paper towels, but it would work for paper towel holders (if it's true). The IoT is here.
This is for people who don't care what things cost and that don't have children (children loooove pressing buttons!).
2. I also believe it said that repeat clicks will not order until the previous order delivers, which should help somewhat on repeat orders.
Haha as I read TFA I envisioned the UPS guy unloading boxes and boxes of toilet paper at the homes of my young nieces and nephews.
Every once in a while the button will just randomly stop working and you'll have to go through the motions again.
Looking at you, printer/scanner combos that won't print because the scanner is failing.
And there is absolutely no indication it's hardcoded to use a specific product.
Hardware is the easy bit in the whole IoT business model. The tricky bit will be persuading people that it's something they need. For this business model to work it has to solve a big enough problem that taking the time to sign up for something like this button, getting it delivered, setting it up, and actually remembering to press it when necessary is worth the effort. That's a challenging thing to market to people - especially those who live outside of the tech industry. Which is most people.
"Build it, they will come" will not work here. Because it doesn't work anywhere.
CPGs will pay a LOT for this because it makes their brands "stickier". I can't tell you what brand of paper towels I normally buy, but if I always bought them through my "Bounty" button, I would always buy Bounty paper towels instead of whatever is on sale at the store.
I doubt this button connects to Wi-Fi directly - that's too much hassle (and too power-hungry). I wonder if Amazon has some sort of Zigbee-like controller embedded in the Amazon Echo that is set up to manage low-power devices like this.
Exactly right, and this is exactly analogous to brands (or more often, their distributors) renting shelf space, and sometimes even hiring their own people to stock shelves.
But here's why I (and I bet many others) really dislike this: it tightly couples purchasing everyday things to Amazon.
What would be better?
I would have rather seen a third party come out with these little buttons, with an open API such that they could be connected to things like:
- Todo/grocery list apps that adds the item as a reminder the next time I run to the store
- Tech savy B&M grocery stores that I could place an order for easy pick-up
- Online sites -- including Amazon -- where I could place an easy order
This would have me excited. This would allow others to benefit, and me to have more choices.
But as it is, if this is successful, then it means people are even more bound to Amazon than ever before.
Platform lock in for consumables. My bet is they'll just give them away on the containers themselves to get you to use it.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I think the core idea is actually pretty good- a seamless way to remember to get stuff you need at the time you realize you need it. One of the major pain points for shoppers is keeping track of all the crap you need at the time you are at the store. If you could continuously add to the list and then the grocery stores had some kind of integration with their loyalty program so it knew when you had purchased what was on your list and automatically removed it, that would be a huge time-saver. Even if it just synced to a todo list, that would be really nice.
However, there are two things that I think would prevent this from becoming a game-changer for Amazon. First, most shoppers are extraordinarily price-sensitive when it comes to household goods. Wal-Mart is a $270 billion company precisely because of this. Most people like to comparison shop based largely on price. If the concept of price is completely hidden from view until after the purchase is made, you are trading transparency for ease-of-use. There is certainly a market for this, but not the largest share of it.
Second, as long as there are other things that shoppers have to get at the grocery (namely, groceries), I believe that most will opt to wait until they go next time since they have to go anyway. This product doesn't solve the problem of instant-gratification and having the product at the time you need it, it just makes it a little easier to order it when you need it.
Amazon, and many others, are betting this is increasingly less true, and not only that, but price discrimination is the most important profit maximizing method in the world. These are price discrimination buttons.
Of course that would be amazing if it had any chance of ever existing, but it's just not possible in the society today.
Companies with money will build stuff and lock you in, and companies trying to unify everything either don't have the money or don't get the big players in, because they're not interested in shared markets, they much prefer monopoly.
The same thing happens in messaging, music, OSes, video content, etc.
It's the unfortunate truth of current times.
I mean, who will scatter these "buttons" all over their house, which will inevitably need new batteries at ever shorter and diverging intervals...
On top of that, ~~the ESP8266 doesn't seem to implement wifi, it's just 2.4ghz general purpose radio.~~
There is definitely some cleverness happening here that allows them to get this to where it is. I'd love to get one just to tear it down.
I doubt the battery is even replaceable.
In the end though, the buttons are really just an advertisement for the real product: the API.
They list several partners who are going to release products using it - Brita water filters (buys new filters), Whirlpool washer/dryer (detergent), Brother printers (ink/toner) and Quirky who seems to have several products that all re-order consumables.
Looks like Amazon's investing heavily into the "Internet of Things" with this.
♫ The cat came back, the very next day ♫
When I run out of detergent, I don't want to add it to shopping list. I don't want to remember when to buy. I just want it outside my door before I run out! This applies to any item that I don't feel like buying but have to buy regularly.
Can I get a Dash button for any random product? 'Cause I want, well, pretty much just one.
Imagine how much it would suck if your kid got hold of one of these buttons thinking it is a toy and accidentally ordered 200+ bottles of detergent (at a cost of $1000)? I foresee this being a hilarious potential problem of the future: accidentally buying too many things due to user error or a malfunctioning button.
"Billy, did you order 1 of everything again?"
Knock, knock. "Hi, I'm Alexa, and my OkCupid profile is a 94% match to yours. Because of that, OkC unlocked your pre-selected social profiles for my perusal. Google Now alerted me to the opening in your schedule right now, Uber took me to your house, and plus I saw you like that Thai food joint down the street based on your FourSquare, so I brought some. Oh, and I thought we might as well watch a comedy flick you've been wanting to see according to your Netflix."
I'm sure someone (more creative than me) could write a better one
Fresh bake bread at the tap of a button™
Press a button and do you your laundry™
Need more weed? There's a button for that™
Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant, press for Soma™
Rat in a cage? Press for food!™
Can you see how this idea is ill considered? IT doesn't make much sense.
I predict in 5 years nobody will remember this and it will be gone from Amazon's site.
But for this press cycle it's PR that makes Amazon look "innovative" and like a "tech company".
Just like the Amazon fire phone did... for a little while. How much was wasted on that idea?
Basically everything you get with any modern smartphone, only larger, more expensive, and probably technologically inferior!
It must an April fools joke.
Surely someone would have thought of this? Just seems like a really bad choice -- too bad for a company like Amazon to make (the timing, that is, coupled with a highly-branded product like this).
Not even sure that was around April fools, but my point is, bad coverage can, and has often, backfired.
What should Amazon know better about? Gmail launching on April Fools was a net positive thing.
If your toddler presses it, the worst they can do is order once. It's configured to only allow one order until the item is delivered. That isn't to say your toddler still cannot do damage...
Something about that video (and much of my opinion is based on the video and look of the product) makes me uneasy. It's suggesting my life is a series of purchases and top-ups, and I will be happier when I can click my branded button. Like a junkie or something. When the woman runs out of coffee it looks like she's lost a loved one. Quickly, press the button! A dystopian future, only today.
Then there are questions about when to press the button, will I have to factor delivery time and frequency of use to arrive at that answer? And will everything arrive separately? Will orders aggregate... Time will tell.
Of course, it's in Amazon's best economic interest to normalize and associate good feelings with the ideas of endless consumption and perpetually repeating purchasing.
The only "junkie" vibe I got from this was the k-cups.
There should be a button for the construction of Moai and another for a family set of inflatable row boats complete with solar-powered floating kitchen (the latter delivered by amphibious drone, of course).
Clearly, as a species, we have not yet learned anything about the collapse of civilizations, and in so doing, proceed to another Tragedy of Commons at a gentle pace, because it's "not an emergency." ("Boiling frog" parable.)
Carbon emissions need to be cut drastically, and this product sets a terrible example contrary to that.
I'm not sure I understand the blowback on how and when to push the button. It's only for amazon prime members right now, so presumably you'll press the button when you need something within the next few days.
Do you wait until you are completely out of something, drop everything and drive to a store and buy it, or do you plan ahead? Same thing here without having to go to a store or write it down on a list to remember.
This seems like a great product for the post-college individual, living away on their own for the first time (i.e. me). Heck, I know already that I'm low on detergent, yet I keep forgetting to go to the store to pick up more. Obviously that's my fault, but being able to LITERALLY press a button and have what I need appear at my doorstep is pretty sweet.
Though, I'm still not totally convinced that this isn't an April Fool's joke that's a day early...
Spoken like someone who thinks there's a single timezone on the planet.
The first shot of the phone is during setup. The second shot is the "an order was made" push notification, which you can use to cancel the order, but no action means it will just go through.
Hum, wait a minute...
Maybe considering their history of product announcements (Amazon Echo), they're being cautious about it this time. If it gets mocked, they'll just say "Oh it was an April Fool's joke"
Good job we've got your back. We'll send you some more of those precious packets.
And how is this different from the present ? Everything comes non-packets ? From an untrusted brand ? That dystopian future sounds better somehow.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Consumer_behavior
Every decision is important, and every time it is automated for the sake of convenience is a little bit of disenfranchisement.
Again, it depends what you consider important. Purchasing decisions arguably dictate much transnational economic concerns. For example palm oil, the fair trade movement. As a global citizen I would say that was well spent decision juice.
I'm sitting higher up on my high horse than I started, but discussions tend to polarise / crystallize views!
Close; bulk ingredients and reusable containers, from a minimally branded supplier to which I have no loyalty.
But, if you want an identity that isn't based on consumerism, it seems we should devote less attention to your purchases rather than more.
Honestly, I don't care about toilet paper. If I can hit a button and move on with the rest of my life, that seems better than spending time shopping for it.
I get lots of small deliveries of whatever i need an can spend less time shopping - perfect.
We are currently in a single-serve consumer-focused environment and this takes it a step farther.. potentially a single item shipment environment.
Unless they batch days or a full week, I think this is a bad habit to get in.
"The dream of the 1890's is alive in Portland..."
I swear, mutants under the overpasses...
Then again, I doubt my current preferred brand[0] would be available with a branded button.
If the physical button was free, I wouldn't mind having a few of these to just press when I need some more of something like that. Remembering to write it on a list and bring it with you to the store and pick it up is a bit of a hassle.
This could be pretty handy to have.
Seriously though, do I question my habits when buying food, drinks and coffee. This video is saying "you can lock yourself into a cycle of dependence on this one brand of coffee and this one brand of water and this one brand of cheap unhealthy ready-made packaged food".
Either you find that unpalatable in principle or you don't. It's probably a cultural thing.
Personally, I buy the same stuff over and over because it doesn't matter. I don't want to spend time worrying about things that don't matter.
"Maybe I can go without wiping my ass this time?"
I think it's more for refilling things you commonly use without needing to worry about them. I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten things like detergent when we were low or out but pressing a button when I notice it's out right after I use it? That's really low friction. It's not a half bad idea in my opinion.
Except your kids won't spam that on your phone, like they would with a physical button.
Or you can't reorder until you sit through a 30-second Tide commercial first.
This extends the 'Subscribe and Save' model to products that people are unsure about how often they will need it. You put a Dash button on the shelf where you store toilet paper, and you know precisely when to hit it.
This seems like a small thing, but it's not. There are metrics that measure easily measure how much you forget simply by moving between different rooms in your house.
I love it. The IoT just got a killer application!
Consider me old fashioned, but what is so hard about a shopping list, or a problem that's not already solved by amazon subscriptions? Especially on essential items, usage rate is pretty static, and its not like hitting "OMG IM OUT OF BOUNTYS!" button will make them instantly appear.
Perhaps this is their implementation of Adobe's "encyclopedia" commercial? (ok im done with TV references)
What WOULD be cool and useful is a way for me to say "hey, send me this subscription item a week later/earlier because my usage rate is not what i thought it would be.
i have an echo and think it's completely amazing. my friend, basically has siri in his pocket and doesn't understand my crazy-love. the difference is that he's a single guy with his own apartment who always has his phone or computer within reach. i'm not.
my house is a family of four (me, the beautiful wife, a couple pre-teen boys) with a large common area filled with lots of traffic and commotion. the kids don't have phones. my wife and i have phones and computers, but they're not always in reach. whether she's making everyone's lunches in the morning, i'm playing munchkin with the boys, she's helping them with homework, i'm washing dishes after dinner, etc. -- it's rarely convenient (not to mention the poor social etiquette around the dinner table) to whip out a phone and do any 60-seconds-or-more task. with a family, you are kind of forced to be fully engaged most of the time.
this means we use the heck out of the amazon echo for the shopping list (also the music player, weather check, and timers for the boys) out of pure, unadulterated convenience.
in a busy household, it may sound cliche, but it's EXTREMELY convenient to just say "alexa, add sandwich bags to the shopping list" and the like while you're elbow-deep into putting away leftovers.
but having a free, physical button that magically reorders trash bags or detergent or paper towels placed in the very location where you would consume such things? magical!
because, again, in a busy household there are about a thousand other things you need to get to by the time you notice "oh, we're almost out of toilet paper" and inevitably, you'll catch yourself standing in costco next week trying to remember all the things you were almost out of.
and these are just the benefits to me -- for tide? this seems like a huge opportunity for brand lock-in and is probably even a joint venture between them and amazon.
The shopping list is one win. It's also convenient just to ask the weather as I'm about to head out the door, for example.
I don't get it. I keep tens of such things in my kitchen alone (paper towels, napkins, dish sponges, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, etc, etc). Does anyone really want a bank of these buttons lined up inside each cabinet? Wouldn't it be about 1000x more convenient to just have an app for this with all my Dash buttons running on the little computer that's always within arm's reach?
i would certainly rather have a small bank of interchangeable buttons for the 1/2 dozen items below my sink (dishwasher pods, 408, windex, sponges, trash bags, dish soap) than having to (with wet hands) find my phone/app/screen/button/click. those, of course, would be different than the small bank of buttons near the shelf in the garage. which would be different than the small bank of buttons in the laundry room.
would it make the inside of the sink cabinet door nicer-looking to have an app in my pocket? probably. also, this isn't a zero-sum thing. we can have both!
I'd like an app with a lineup of Amazon Dash consumables. If my hands are filthy or wet I'll try to keep a single intention in my head for 30 seconds until that's no longer the case. And if I don't feel like doing that I can just write a note on a pad.
Manufacturing cost can be off-loaded to the product makers: the buttons look branded, so if you are Tide you are paying something like $20/40 bucks to get a constant Tide logo inside my cupboard and getting the path of least resistance for purchases... if you've ever dealt with marketing numbers, that's not bad at all!
In all honesty, I don't think I would use the buttons though. The API is the important piece. I could see me configuring this with IFTTT do button or something. Do things like order a week of groceries when I know I'm going to be home for a week, etc.
I'm sure people are going to hate on these buttons, think of the API here.
Also, knowing Amazon, they will pack a Prime box and ship it with just that one *$%! bottle of laundry detergent or an envelope with just the pack of razors. Short press for "some time in the next week", long press for "tomorrow", and 12-rapid-clicks for "I'm naked and have no clean clothes, send it on the drone!"
EDIT: typo
The razor one could go on the side of my medicine cabinet.
I'd stick the Bounty button to the wall above the paper towel holder in the kitchen.
Before you give me your money, consider:
* You can have as many buttons as you want. They want you to have as many buttons as you can have. They have hooks and adhesive, which means you can basically have a button physically on every product that needs to be replaced. Your toilet paper holder can have a button. Your shower can have a button for shampoo and conditioner. Your mirror can have five buttons on it. Personally, I would fucking love for my house to be covered with buttons that I can just push to get things sent to me. That's the future I want.
* The button generates a notification on your phone and doesn't respond to subsequent presses, so you can cancel the order on your phone if your kids press the button. But the real solution here is to not have children. The world is overpopulated enough, and with the money you save by not having kids, you can just get more stuff from amazon. Which would you rather have: A new gaming PC, iPad, and iPhone every year, or some brat that won't appreciate you, won't call you more than once a month after you spend the best years of your life trying to raise them into a halfway decent person and failing because their snot-nosed friends ruin them, and keeps asking for money? The choice is obvious.
Quod erat demonstrandum ... it's an April Fools'.
If you won't even risk the price of four Starbucks coffees on your belief, do you really have it?
With that out of the way, the question comes down to one thing. Is this the future? Is this the best solution? My answer, is a big No.
What's a better approach for in-the-moment, one-touch ordering of household necessities? I'm sure Amazon would like to hear your idea.
> How many buttons are you going to have in your household?
However many you would like. Sorta depends on what kind of products you'd like to buy in this manner. That's kinda the point.
> How are you going to protect it from kids
First of all, children are short. Put the buttons out of their reach. Second -- these are incredibly boring buttons that order boring things and provide no immediate pleasure or feedback. Kids don't crawl around on top of washing machines looking for buttons to press because washing machines are boring. Also you get a notification when you order something, so a kid smashing it is easily reversed. Common sense works fine here.
(Also, lots and lots of people don't have kids, or have kids old enough that they're not going to press a button to order laundry detergent willy-nilly, etc.)
The world is moving towards connected homes, connected cars, connected fridges etc, why the hell would you want individual stick on buttons, that would be silly.
I get my cat-litter tub of Arm & Hammer from BJ's for 20% of the cost of Tide.
Or condoms next to my bed? Awkward!
* Paper towels
* Toilet Paper
* Shaving Cream
* Razor Blades
* Body Wash
* Shampoo/Conditioner
* Tissues
* Deodorant
* Some K-cups
* Dryer Sheets
* Dish Washing soap
* Laundry Detergent
* Dishwasher powder-stuff
And I'm sure there are a few more I'm forgetting. It's awesome to never have to worry about these things and have them just show up. If I start piling up with too many of certain item I just go online and adjust how often they send it to me. I highly recommend it!
This button prevents you from playing the "specials" game.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in Australia, our groceries are put on special once month for a week or so 30-50% off regular retail. (I would love to see this graphed out somewhere.)
I assume the reason is so that, people that don't care how much their groceries cost, or don't have the foresight to buy in advance pay 30-50% more than somebody who buys things when they are on special.
I like to think the special price is the actual price, and the regular price is the suckers price.
Added later: is anyone else reminded of CueCat, from the 90s?
For example, in my bathroom, I'd load up my preferred choices of, say, soap, shampoo, hand soap, toilet paper, toilet bowl cleaner, toothpaste, etc. onto this cheap tablet, mount it somewhere in my bathroom (maybe on a wall somewhere near the sink or something), and forget about it until I realize I'm nearly out of shampoo, at which point I'll hit the "Head & Shoulders" button on my little bathroom kiosk and Amazon will have a bottle of seleniumy alien-invasion-stopping goodness delivered to my front door within 2 business days.
My laundry room would then have a similar little e-Ink kiosk loaded with options for detergent, dryer sheets, and the various cleaning supplies I store in there. The kitchen's kiosk would have buttons for things like dishwasher gel, soap, and some commonly-purchased food items like Top Ramen and Deschutes porter and glass-bottle Mountain Dew.
Basically, I can see a future where such a concept of integrating restocking with day-to-day activities can be reality, and while these Dash buttons ain't perfect, they're a step in the right direction in ways that current smartphone-centric methods can't easily replicate.
If you like a brand, you should really be doing a quick c/b analysis prior to making any purchase. Why? Because it changes often.
A seller's entire goal in life is to extract maximum profit, so they tinker endlessly, with formulas, package sizes, prices, etc, etc.
As a consumer, you should be looking at how this movement affects your personal cost benefit analysis. At some point, the price may become too high, the formula not ideal, etc. for you.
Simply disregarding that and saying "no matter what, I buy Tide" is a sure way to be taken to the cleaners.
This is a genius bit of technology for businesses that want to maximize profits, so I'm sure they will be all over it. P&G would love to sell you Tide without you even looking at other brands, or the size of the package, or the price. It's a seller's dream.
It's horrible for a consumer though. I'd suggest all consumers give careful thought to relinquishing any bargaining power they may have in an already unbalanced equation.
Case in point: Disposable razors.
EDIT: Heh, didn't think this would be a popular post. Go figure.
>For many people, the $10/order of rethinking prices isn't worth the hassle of 15 minutes and uncertainty in a less important decision.
I'll just put this here: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-09-30/consumer-deb...
I'm perfectly aware that people prefer not to actually think about their money. Hell, that's why credit cards are so popular. I'm saying though that whether they realize it or not, it is not in their best interests to value their few minutes of time over the money they have.
It's much more time efficient not to sweat every financial detail. Save time for the big ones. (Mortgage rates, negotiating cards, optimizing debt, making investment choices, etc)
The two are distinctly connected. People who are likely not worrying about an extra $5-$10 are likely not worrying about an extra $5K-$10K either. It's a mentality, not a number.
As far as I can tell you can decide if you think the price/convenience tradeoff works for you.
As it stands right now, when I go to get replacement razor blades from Amazon, I don't price compare anyways. I know what the ballpark price is, and if its in that ballpark I order. I could spend 2 hours on SlickDeals and other various sites finding the best price, and doing auctions on EBay, but I decided that saving a buck or two isn't worth it (especially since half the time I'd end up saving no money).
There's a washing detergent I usually buy because it tends to be cheap and does the job well. But this weekend in my local supermarket it seemed more expensive than usual and another similar one was on sale. I figured I'd take a look - turns out they're both owned by procter&gamble, their ingredients are identical and they claim to do exactly the same thing with the same amount of liquid. My assumption is they're bottled from the same vat, they're certainly interchangeable for me.
I'm not saying go analyse every product on the shelves instead of just picking up whatever, but if you're not in a rush it's worth checking special offers if they're really similar to what you were going to buy.
And it's definitely worth being aware of the megacorporations that own the brands on the supermarket shelves - most of the well known brands are owned by a few umbrella organisations and not really competing at a high level.
I doubt this is a surprise to anyone, but as a couple of examples PG [0] own BOSS Black, Christina Aguilera, Hugo and Old Spice fragrances; as well as Bold, Daz, Fairy, Flash and Lenor detergents. There are nowhere near as many competitors as there are brands on supermarket shelves.
[0] full list: http://www.pg.com/en_UK/brands/all-brands.shtml
A quick list of purchasables through the phone app is something essentially have, or could have with very minimal work. Getting people to use what essentially doesn't sound like that interesting of a feature is the problem. A cool swizzy new hardware device fits that need, and once people are using that, the App just pre-fills the quick list with items they are using through hardware. People can then decide whether they want a new button for a new essential, or just to add it to the app, and eventually people are just using the app more because there don't exist certain buttons or waiting for them is a hassle.
Not the kind of thing just any company could pul off, but it is the kind of thing I think Amazon could.
But it could easily be made real: Add a camera and you could have something to either scan a bar code or recognize the product label. Press button, hold the item in question still for a second, done. No need for 2 rows of buttons in the kitchen ;)
(I've actually seen something like this for shopping list creation as a DIY project somewhere, years ago)
There are many situations where your inventory runs low of something fairly obscure. Having the employee press the "order more" button and have shit show up is productivity boost. Sure, you could accomplish the same with a barcode and scanner app, but it is a little bit more automation.
I could easily order laundry soap on my phone, but this is far quicker and easier, and a genius move by Amazon.
How long until these light up and start talking to you, begging you to press the button whenever it senses motion near it?
But whatever - they're pushing the ball. If this takes off, eventually you'll be able to build your own - something I have been waiting for at a reasonable price point. It also means other market engagement - things like food or medical monitoring - some good possibilities there.
But I don't think this is an april fools joke. If it is, they're the fools. It's only march 30th.
1) You register all the products you reorder with any frequency (detergents, napkins, whatever)
2) Each package comes with a remotely readable electronic tag
3) A device periodically scans for inventory (I'm assuming very little intelligence in the tags, so an evented system is out)
4) When the number of packages per type reaches some critical threshold, you receive an email/app alert asking if you'd like to reorder
Some refrigerators have this, but it would be much more interesting to have it be all products. One of the first steps would be to have some kind of open standard for the tags so any manufacturer could include them.
Bummed I couldn't find it, though.
"Button! Must Click it! What does it do? I don't know! Click it again!"
Just doesn't seem plausible. April Fools is tomorrow.
Given that it would literally only have to connect to the wifi and do the API calls when the button is pressed, the power usage would be minuscule.
Except for those intangible benefits like reducing carbon footprints. I tend to feel guilty purchasing one-off small items and tend to group those purchases, even though I don't have to.
as a parent, the places these buttons would need to be for me are already child-proofed. if it's sitting next to where i keep my laundry detergent, that space is already child-proofed. if it's under the sink next to my bottle of 409, it's already child-proofed.
know what i mean?
So I'd be willing to use a button like this for a store with consistently low prices like Costco (or even WalMart), but not for Amazon.
All this lock-in to Amazon does is obscure that these days you can find the same deal or better elsewhere with a little bit of looking. Especially with groceries and household items Amazon has never been as competitive as they consistently are with media.
Also my curious little-one, my playful and naughty cats, my ...
I believe that Amazon would place in some security features, like not processing the orders when they come in at a rate that is too frequent to be normal, require confirmation via email/SMS/etc. But then again, why make sth. like buying detergent which is as simple as going to the nearest market and giving them some change into a technological action that involves the postal service, an internet company, a bank, the internet, and electronics?
It feels like a joke, but I could use this. I already have Amazon Subscribe-and-Save set up to deliver products on a regular basis, but the available schedules don't always meet my usage patterns. Having a button for "I took the last box of diapers out of the closet" would be perfect.
I want to be able to modify it to buy the things I want, not just from the limited set it confines me to.
This doesn't have to be for the home. There are thousands of things that it won't be good for. There are more that it will be good for.
Stove burners are deliberately a lot less easy to activate than push buttons.
It's not the knob that stops them, it's being disciplined by parents.
Next up, buttons for kids, to get em hooked early. A Cheerio button! :)
Apparently amazon likes their mac and cheese a little dry...
Maybe have one generic button that opens an app on your phone to choose an item from your 'frequently purchased' items.
I often leave re-stocking items till later and ultimately end up forgetting.
Thankfully by default it only registers the fist press, till delivery resets it. But if you have one for many things and a kid goes on a tear...
O brave new world, That has such consumers in't!pro: It's kind of absurd, impracticably too many products/buttons
con: It's 3/31, no one else is thinking it's a joke...
My hope is that this is for April 1.
I can't believe this isn't already built into Keurigs.
I don't buy one bottle of detergent. I buy 5. When there's two left or whatever, I have weeks to get another 5. If the item has high shelf life and I know that I need it for essentially forever, I might even get 10 or 15 or more.
And no, my home isn't especially cluttered.
Boggles my mind. Why is pasta even sold in 500g bags?
Are we really that lazy now?
That beats Pacmaps for sure!
"I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up Somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use."
(edited to add, HP Lovecraft was my favorite sysadmin in my youth)
Anybody know what stack are they using ? For e.g. Paypal Beacon used some combination of Go running on Arm5
If it's real then I might need to go and have a little cry.
(Like most stuff coming out of Amazon, I can't actually tell if this is a good idea)
Now I can't speak for Amazon themselves, most of the complaints seem to stem from the fact that being a picker IS a skill. Not everyone can be good at it. It's physical - which I personally found fantastic, getting paid to stay fit, and on company time. You need to have somewhat a good memory, but more importantly an analytical brain to process the information on the scanner. Whilst the locations of the items might not have any seemingly logical order, the layout of the facility does. If you can process the bin locations immediately then you save many seconds of your target. Which brings me to the targets. It may seem 'slave-like' to have a timer between picks but each and every one is achievable (through analysis of every other pick ever made), and even if you miss a pick by 5 seconds, you've probably saved 5 seconds somewhere else during that same day/week/month (depending on how they evaluate your performance). Again though that's no to say that everyone has the skill to do so.
The episode you highlighted mentions that employees at Amazon tend to enjoy their work. If you can do the job, there's very little stress, pay can be good - we're talking about a generally unskilled job, certainly more than most retail stores. Decent benefits - vacation, healthcare etc. Shifts can be very favourable depending on the facility - 4 in 4 off can mean long weekends and plenty of opportunity for family time.
Some days I wish I was just picking.