Dear LG, I Don’t Want To Write A Word Document On My Fridge

LG have just announced a smart fridge at IFA in Berlin – integrating Windows 10 into a touchscreen panel on the door… Seems like after 5 years, tech companies have not learnt the real lesson about innovation.

You may have seen me get irate about this before – Samsung’s Galaxy Camera way back in 2012, for example – but the big guys really don’t seem to get it, so I will make it simple.

Innovation is not just bolting a computer onto something.

A product is not only defined by what it has but what it doesn’t have – and giving people the opportunity to browse the web and even create word documents on their fridge door is one of the most pointless ideas I’ve ever heard.

And don’t blame my old age on this. Blame the fact that chances are you will forget about it completely in the face of using…oh, I don’t know… A laptop? A tablet? A smartphone?

Why on Earth would I need to use Microsoft Word on a Fridge!?

I get it, though – stuff like this works well on a product spec sheet in your local Currys PC World. However, even though new technology trains people to new forms of interaction, using your Fridge as a computer will never be one of those new trained interactions.

So in the pissing contest of pointless features, it seems that LG pips the post this time, but enough is enough. I’ve rallied against this needlessness for nearly five years and nothing is being done.

Please preserve the focus of your products, and use technology to enhance that – don’t just tack it on for the sake of it being there.

Because in the end, you’re hurting the smaller but more important innovations of your products. The sticky timers you can attach to products in the fridge, so you can see when they go out of date is a lifesaver, which will be lost in the noise.

Focus first – you’ll win me and many more people back.