On the occasion of the 30-year anniversary of the Sony Walkman BBC's The Magazine asked 13 year old Scott Campbell to trade his iPod for the original Sony Walkman for a week, which led to a (hilarious) review, including gems like this one:

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Earlier the simplicity of the first walkman was heralded in an article called Objects of Desire (members only) in Technology Review, which included the following quote:

"It has simplicity of use," says Logan. "You could give it to someone who's never used one before and they can use it. "

And at the time I read that, I totally agreed. Only to be proven wrong by 13-year old Scott. Back then, in the 1980's, you could give the walkman to anyone and they'd know how to use it (also because in comparison to an iPod it has way less features), but today's (younger) users lack some of the required knowledge to interact with it. Once again it turns out that there is no such thing as a usable product. It really depends on who will interact with the product, what knowledge and skills this person has, and in what kind of context the interaction takes place.

[Via Nickbaum]