I’ve been thinking about the time-saving features that I take for granted in everyday products. Here’s a few that come to mind:

– The way my BlackBerry remembers which email account I used to send a message, and selects it automatically next time.

– The “Cancel” button on laser printers that instantly deletes the job, without having to mess with the print queue on my computer.

– The “Close Door” button in elevators, even if it’s usually too slow to stop the guy with too much cologne or the woman with a rabid child from sliding in at the last minute.

I wonder how long it took each of these features to appear, and whether it was due to customer requests or just clever innovation on the designer’s part.