Why buy a device that does less?

A product designer’s breakdown of how affordances, context of use, and Jobs to be Done beat infinite features

I love watching how people behave around technology. For years, I’ve been curious about something that seems, at first, completely irrational: Why do people buy dedicated devices for things their smartphones can already do? A Kindle for reading. A GoPro for taking photos and videos. A smartwatch for checking notifications. A digital camera when your phone already has a pretty good camera.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this isn’t really a question about gadgets. It’s a product-design question.

When does reducing features actually make a product better? What needs can a multifunctional product fail to fulfill? And when is designing a completely new device the right decision?

Ironically, thinking about these questions has made me even less interested in my phone. As I write this essay, I’m actually using it. And suddenly I’m noticing everything I don’t like about it. My hands hate the posture of holding it. My eyes hate scrolling. My brain hates the notifications. My skin hates the heat during a long call.

And suddenly, the phone that can supposedly do everything, doesn’t feel like the best tool for any particular thing. That took me back to three fundamental UX concepts:
1.Context of Use
2.Jobs to Be Done
3.and Affordance.
And maybe these three concepts explain why sometimes less is more.

1. Context of Use

Context isn’t just something we care about when working with AI. It changes the entire human-product relationship too.

When I first learned about Context of use, I finally understood why I’ve always been so curious about users’ lives outside the product itself. Because a product doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists inside a situation.

It is a foundational concept in user-centered design and usability engineering (formally defined in ISO 9241–11), emphasizing that a product cannot be judged as usable in isolation , only within the conditions where it actually operates.

The decision to buy a dedicated device over using an all-in-one smartphone is fundamentally driven by context of use mismatch, including:

Environmental Constraints (Physical Context):
Smartphones overheat and wash out in bright sun. An e-reader uses reflective E-ink that looks sharper under direct sunlight.

Task Ergonomics & Physical Interfaces (Equipment Context):
Dedicated gaming handhelds or DSLR cameras provide physical buttons, dials, grip depth, and low-latency mechanical feedback that touchscreens cannot replicate, especially when wearing gloves or operating blind.

Cognitive & Social Environment (Psychological Context):
A smartphone is socially and technically wired for multitasking, pings, and social feeds. Dedicated e-readers or digital note-taking tablets strip out notifications to match a context requiring deep, uninterrupted focus.

Task Criticality & Resource Limits (Task Context):
On a multi-day backcountry hike, relying on a phone for mapping burns critical battery needed for emergency calls. A dedicated satellite communicator/GPS handles tracking independently.

2. Jobs to Be Done

I love the names that almost explain the philosophy behind them.

The basic idea of JTBD (Job To Be Done) is that people don’t really buy products because they want the product. They “hire” a product to help them make progress in a particular situation.

In the famous milkshake example, researchers asked why people bought milkshakes at fast-food restaurants. They looked at when and why people bought them and discovered that many customers bought milkshakes early in the morning before a long commute. They weren’t necessarily craving a milkshake , they wanted something to make their boring drive more enjoyable. Because a milkshake was easy to hold, took a long time to finish, and kept them occupied, it perfectly served that purpose. In other words, they weren’t buying a milkshake; they were “hiring” it to make their commute less boring.

And this brings us back to dedicated devices. A smartphone has hundreds of jobs. That’s its superpower. But it can also be its weakness. A Kindle has a much narrower job: Help me read. A GoPro has a much narrower job: Help me capture action in environments where a normal camera isn’t ideal.

The dedicated product doesn’t necessarily win because it has more capability.It can win because it is more committed to one job. And commitment is valuable.

3. Affordance

The third concept is probably the one that made me most excited when I first encountered it in my industrial design history class. Don Norman introduced this term to the design community.

In simple terms, affordance is about what an object makes possible. What actions it invites or enables through its physical or perceptual characteristics.

Think about a flat metal plate on a door. You see a flat surface. Your instinct is: Push. You don’t need a tutorial explaining: “Please place your hand here and apply force in this direction.” The object communicates the action.That’s the beauty of affordances.

And this is where smartphones get really interesting. A smartphone is essentially a flat rectangle of glass. The same rectangle can be a book, a camera, a TV, a game console, a notebook, a map, a music player, a messaging device, a social network, and a work computer. The physical object barely changes. The interface changes.

And because the hardware is so flexible, the physical object itself gives us very few clues about what we’re supposed to do right now. This is what I think of as affordance collapse. Reading a book, checking Instagram, replying to Slack, taking a photo, and watching YouTube all happen on the same piece of glass.

The phone constantly affords more.And sometimes more possibilities mean more distractions.A Kindle, on the other hand, strongly communicates: Read. A camera communicates: Take pictures. A physical notebook communicates: Write.

A dedicated device introduces constraints.And those constraints can actually make the interaction better.

So… why do we buy devices that do less?

Maybe the answer isn’t that people want fewer features. Maybe they want fewer possibilities at the right moment. That’s a very different thing.

We often talk about good product design as if the goal is to add value, But sometimes the most valuable thing a product can do is remove everything that doesn’t belong. Your smartphone can technically replace your Kindle. But your Kindle can replace something your smartphone can’t easily provide: a context in which reading is the obvious thing to do.

There is something funny about all of this. The device I’m criticizing is the exact device I’m using to write this essay. My phone can help me research this topic, write the article, edit it, publish it, respond to comments, take a photo for the article, post it on social media, and probably remind me to drink water afterward. It’s ridiculously capable.

And yet, while writing this, I keep thinking: Maybe I would write better if it couldn’t do all of that. Maybe that’s the real opportunity for dedicated devices. Not to beat smartphones at being smartphones. But to create a different relationship between the person, the task, and the environment.

So the next time you see a product with fewer features than your phone, maybe don’t ask: “Why would anyone buy this when my phone can already do it? Ask: “What does this product make easier, more focused, or more appropriate that my phone doesn’t?”

Why buy a device that does less? was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.