When Cisco killed the beloved Flip camcorder a few months ago, a lot of people were shocked and upset—including me. It just seemed like such a ham-handed, thoughtless way to terminate an iconic, very popular gadget.

I continue to read, online and in newspapers, that Cisco killed the Flip camcorder because the writing was on the wall: smartphones now have video capability, so nobody needs a standalone gadget.

I’ve written before on the topic of single-purpose versus multipurpose gadgets. But today, here’s an especially articulate essay on this subject. It’s a guest post from Nasahn Sheppard, director of industrial design at Smart Design, the company that designed the Flip camcorder itself.



The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.

Sign up | See Sample The Times’s technology columnist, David Pogue, keeps you on top of the industry in his free, weekly e-mail newsletter.

Swiss army knives are great. I love them, and as a designer I appreciate how they have become an indispensable tool. For instance, after graduating college, I took an amazing five-month backpack trip though Europe. As I roamed from country to country soaking up Europe’s treasures, my Swiss Army knife was a trusted companion. I had carefully chosen mine because it had a fork, tweezers, pen, saw (you never know), nail cutter, and not one, but two knife blades ready to support a spontaneous picnic.

But as great as my Swiss Army knife was, when I got home, I didn’t use it to prepare dinner. Why didn’t I want to use it as a primary kitchen tool? Because its versatility comes at a price. In my travels, it fit my needs perfectly; but at home, it’s…well, completely inadequate.

Context dictates the scale of people’s need. And people’s product experiences depend deeply on the context in which they’re used.

Today, smartphones are touted as the digital equivalent of Swiss Army knives—extremely versatile, do-it-all devices that can be tailored to any situation. They are fundamentally changing the way we communicate, do business, think of computing, and have fun. As the darling of the tech world, it seems like they are destined to drive single purpose products out of business. A recent case in point, a few months ago Cisco decided to “retire” the Flip brand of camcorders. Immediately, everybody was pointing the finger at the smartphone as the cause. It’s a great story, but far from the real reasons Flip was shut down.

According to Gartner research, sales of smartphones are dramatically up. But collectively, they make up only 297 million units, or less than 19 percent of the global mobile phone market. Their growth will continue, of course, and play an increasingly important role in people’s lives. But they can never be a singular convergent solution. A smartphone will someday be able to unlock and turn on our cars, but that doesn’t mean we’ll want to use it as the steering wheel. In some contexts, it’s just better to do one thing really well instead of five things adequately. Just as the Swiss Army knife, the smartphone succeeds in some occasions and fails in others. People still prefer the comfort of watching media on a large screen TV, typing on a full size keyboard, and having a long call on a comfortable handset.

Single-purpose devices are still entering the marketplace and finding great success because they’re focused on real-life contexts. The Kindle is a prime example. It has all the potential to be ‘more,’ but Amazon has shown great restraint to keep it simple and focused on the pleasures of long-form reading.

This type of mode-specific design is not easy thing to do. I’m sure the pressures to clutter up the Kindle with other stuff are great. But restraint is what makes the Kindle so successful. The iPad, a large smartphone, has not displaced the Kindle as many prophesied, and the two successfully co-exist in the world.

Smart Design, the firm I work for, had the privilege of collaborating four years ago with Pure Digital Technologies, a small start-up full of passionate people with big dreams; the result of our work together was the Flip Video line of camcorders. Our shared vision was an easy-to-use, simple video camera that empowered people to share their lives.

Throughout the development of the Flip, there was one question the team repeatedly asked ourselves: “What can we take out, not what can we put in?” This simple question guided every design decision. The result was a product that people immediately understood, enabling them to incorporate video into their lives in a ways they never imagined.

The context was right for a wide variety of people. It even turned my five-year-old daughter into the family Spielberg. Many of the tenets that helped make Flip a amazing success are found in the Kindle and other successful single-purpose devices today.

Even though it makes up less then 3 percent of total global mobile phone sales, the iPhone’s success is unmatched. It’s been incredibly successful for Apple. So why haven’t they gotten rid of iPods, Nanos, and Shuffles? With the versatility of the iPhone, shouldn’t these other single focused products be doomed to fail? The short answer might be, sometimes a Shuffle is all you need. Once again, context dictates the need.

In September 2009, Apple introduced the fifth generation Nano. During the Steve Jobs keynote address, he showed a competitive product: the Flip. “This market is really exploding, and we want to get in on this,” Jobs said. With a Flip on the giant presentation screen, Jobs launches into a side-by-side comparison of the new Nano and Flip. He promised twice the memory, a radically smaller shape, and great video capabilities. The implications were clear: Flip was a fat, single-purpose device that was about to be out-classed by the ultrathin Nano.

Immediately, critics said this was the demise of Flip, but in fact, the exact opposite happened. After Flip’s guest appearance, its sales continue to accelerate at a blistering pace. And in the following Nano version, Apple decided to remove the video camera feature. Video did not fit with people’s use scenario of the Nano. It was the wrong context.

Flip was the undisputed leader of a category that it had helped to create. It fundamentally reshaped the video capturing market. Most importantly, it did exactly (and only) what it promised it would do; its fun, approachable, mode-specific design allowed people to capture and share the in-between moments in their lives. As a parent, the moments of life I want to capture are fleeting. Pulling out my smartphone, launching an app, and waiting for video-capture to start will, without fail, lead me to miss the moment.

My trusty Swiss Army knife is still at the ready for when I take my family on vacation. But I’ll probably take my Flip along, too.

Cisco may have had reasons to kill Flip, but the smartphone was not one of them.