"Eventually, though, competitors mimic your technology, and features become the important differentiator. You load your offering with more stuff, and it fills the product's packaging with bullet points. In the 1980s and into the 1990s, VCRs began loading up on functionality, things like VCR Plus, on-screen menus, various playback speeds, child locks, jog wheels, 21-day timers, the ability to record one frame at a time, and more.

There's a reason the blinking 12:00 became the icon of poorly designed consumer electronics, and most folks used the VCR as simply a VCP—video cassette player, viewing whatever they rented. ...

When you start with the idea of making a thing, you're artificially limiting what you can deliver. The reason that many of these exemplar's forward-thinking product design succeed is explicitly because they don't design products. Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs."

- from Experience IS the Product... and the only thing users care about, an interesting and poignant article about the degradation of experience as technology takes the forefront.

how many cellphones have you played with that the keys are too small? or the menu un-navigateable? how about remotes to televisions that have about 800 to many buttons? human factors design, user experience, and user interface are areas of design and technology that are getting renewed attention simply because the technology for sale these days does not speak to us, the everyman. (it usually speaks to techno-geeks, who have spent time to learn that devices specific language, and can speak back.)

pictured is the first Eastman camera, the Kodak. the articles author speaks of it as the first (at least iconic) user-experience based product, with the tag line being, "You press the button, we do the rest!"