Hi, I'm a founder of piq. I'm sharing this with the community to ask a few questions.

1. We're launching a Kickstarter in about 10 days. If you like the idea, do sign up to our list so we can reach out to you.

2. Does the website explain our idea and concept to you?

What we're trying to communicate is: piq is a little hardware device that's essentially a Roku box for audio -- except, it allows people around you to participate and choose what's playing.

Here's a video where I pitched piq -- http://goo.gl/NFbSH

3. Pick a song for our jukebox! -- http://www.piq.fm/try

We use Facebook for our voting system right now, and I assure you that we do not use any personal data at all {I'd be skeptical if I read this too, but we really mean it} This is an alpha version, but critiques of design and experience would help immensely.

4. And if you made it this far, here's a sneak peek of our Kickstarter video: https://vine.co/v/bjp3aQeEYdj

Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Thanks! Great start there.

MUJI does this often, looking at small, often over looked devices and objects, and re-imagines them in a blue-collar yet poetically beautiful way. Their products often strive to be invisible for the same reason.

The third paragraph on that link really sums it up by opening with "MUJI has always been dedicated to the pursuit of adequacy, of designing products that are truly fit for their purpose." Their view of the term adequate is in stark contrast with a modern representation (say, a minimum viable product). Adequate is good.

In a similar vein (from a different perspective), Milton Glaser's 10 Things I have Learned (http://www.miltonglaser.com/milton/c:essays/#4) says the same "Just enough is more"

I can't remember a single case of patenting improving consumer experience in the modern era.

The way I see it, patents are designed to improve capitalist behaviour, once where your ideas are protected: the march towards innovation is strictly optional.

It's time instead to consider how dependent our world is on iterative practices. Everything we build on and upon is no longer unique: it's all inspired, and improved.

Jim Jarmusch said this once:

>Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.

To embrace iteration, we need to get rid of patents. That much is certain.

You don't know what may have never existed with no patents. Maybe Jobs doesn't even consider the iPhone. This sort of thing is just speculative without a control.

Dyson Vacuum Cleaners.

One sole inventor who developed 5,127+ prototype designs and clearly brought something unique to the marketplace. Gave his whole life and money to the product.

Almost immediately after it came out Hoover copied the design and basically would have put him out of business.

The patents were the ONLY thing that protected him from a huge multinational who didn't invent anything.

Now Dyson went on to invent a whole range of very cool gadgets which never would have existed without patents.

Interestingly, the Dyson design was based on an existing cyclone system widely used to separate out dust and particles in industrial settings. The innovation was using the process in a domestic vacuum cleaner.

So it's not too far removed from the "thing-that-already-exists but on the internet" patents which are a large part of the problem, or the "thing-that-already-exists but on a mobile" patent which is biting Notch's ass at the moment.

Not that I'm saying Dyson's patents are invalid, nor that his designs haven't improved the state of the art in several fields, but he didn't invent the cyclone technology in a... vacuum.

The reactions across the board are quite disappointing, to be honest.

All you can do as a customer (or as anything, for that matter) is give up the illusion of control.

This is the Sparrow story: A fantastic product was built, and exchanged for money. The people behind the product were recognized, and were acquired for a significant amount.

Everyone is a winner, and customers move on to the next thing.

What's more worrying is our reaction to an email client going under: it's clearly a sign that we don't have enough well designed products for a system that's been in mass use for more than a decade.

I completely agree with the fact that there are no well designed products for email, now that Sparrow stopped developing new features - hopefully someone gets a cool idea and puts it on the app store soonish.