When I saw the picture of the new iPhone 11 Pro for the first time, I thought it looked absolutely ridiculous. And I still do. Three cameras on one phone? It just isn’t aesthetically pleasing. That being said, I wasn’t afraid of the phone, but apparently there are some people who are. Trypophobia is “an aversion to the sight of clusters of small holes” according to “Apple’s iPhone 11 Pro ‘triggering’ fear of holes” and evidently this new iPhone is terrifying to people with this particular phobia.
I think this is an interesting example of how you can never completely predict how technology will be received by the public. It’s incredibly important to factor in a variety of perspectives when developing a product- something we should all try to do with our FEDD projects!- but ultimately we can’t account for everything. Therefore, is it just to hold companies accountable for unintended effects of their product? If we can’t make everyone happy, how much of the population should technology be expected to please?
I doubt that Apple intended to scare people with trypophobia and I don’t think they need to alter the design. Apple has a large enough number of consumers that they don’t need to appeal to this small population. I do think consumers have the power to force large companies to change (anyone else remember that Snapchat update?), but ultimately the decision is up to them. I do think there are some scenarios, such as when a product causes obvious mental or physical harm to consumers, that developers must be held responsible in some way beyond losing future consumers.
Unforeseen circumstances will always plague developers, despite efforts to avoid them. As long as they make deliberate efforts to avoid them, I think we can often cut them some slack given that they attempt to remedy the situation if it poses a serious health risk to people and or the environment.