Do you remember Juicero? It was a Silicon Valley born juicer that raised $120m in capital from large investment firms, including Google Ventures. It began selling units in March 2016, and has been defunct as of December 2017.
It had an infamous (and humorous) death when Bloomberg posted a devastating video revealing that hand-squeezing the Juicero-exclusive juice packs yielded identical results as with the $400 juicer.
Beyond the obvious failure of being an overpriced, superfluous product, Juicero clearly did not take a user-centric approach to design. Maybe ego-centric though?
For example, just taking a look at Juicero’s assumptions will reveal…
I try not to open TikTok very often because every time I do, I run into the “Digital Wellbeing” person. After about an hour and a half, they pop up in my feed and encourage me to stop scrolling and go outside, read a book, or contribute to society — anything that makes me put my phone down and stop being a blob. Like how a person with sugar cravings limits the amount of sweets they bring home from the grocery store, I have to actively and consciously avoid TikTok.
Chou Yang
DesignLab Student, Future UX Designer
