A tale of three worlds

by David Holtzman

The world of technology products is a crazy one. Thinking about this other day, I realized that every product is actually designed by and for three completely separate constituencies.

First off, every gadgets is designed to placate lawyers. DVDs that block out menu functions while horrible, meaningless threats flicker on the screen in multiple languages, car GPS systems that disable important functions while the car is moving and force the driver to acknowledge that not looking at the road is dangerous while driving. Code is actually written to satisfy a lawyer. Manuals have significant amounts of gobbledy-gook in them, enough so that it's actually difficult to find operating instructions in English in most of them.

Technological stuff also has to please the marketer. It's very common to have buttons on devices and software functions that seem silly, yet marketers insist on them. That's how you end up with things like graphic equalizers on stereos. Marketers often insist that capabilities be built that make no sense to the developer, but the engineers do it anyway, because in most organizations, they have no power.

Lastly, is the user. Although most gadgets do do what they say that they will do, (radios play, cameras take pictures)., users are often disenfranchised by the other two constituencies, even though the marketers claim to be speaking for them. The truly amazing part, though, is how bad most technology products are at pleasing the consumer. Sure they all do what they say that they'll do, but for how long? How many cell phones lose coverage and PCs need to be constantly rebooted? I'm kind of a gadget freak--an early adopter. Every morning I realize that I could spend the whole day working on my "stuff" if I wanted to--downloading patches, configuring phones, you name it. Hey, life's too short.

What would be nice would be if technology products were built primarily for the user, emphasizing design, safety and maintainability. Especially the latter. I'd love to buy a phone that didn't drop a signal, for instance. I so very rarely run into a tech product that just works out of the box as advertised and doesn't need to be constantly fiddled with. It could be done, but it would take a different design philosophy. Keep the lawyer and the marketer the hell out of the room during product inception. Create a new class of technology worker that is empowered to promote usability and stability and genuinely represents the interests of the consumer.

Posted on May 14, 2006

1 Comment
Bitches

It seems to me that this is an extension of "design by committee". Usability often suffers when trying to connect/integrate components from different companies.

Perhaps Apple will flourish by maintaining its control "end-to-end". The (business) critics say "users" want "choices" but methinks they doth whine to much. Users have "chosen" the iPod for example. One might ask "Why?". Because the like them! They "just work"!

Posted by Jason on May 15, 2006


Mobilize.org is launching a new campaign in response to Congress’ attempt to censor the communication of our generation. We have created the action alert below and built a website, www.mobilize.org/SOS. We are hoping to get as much grassroots action as possible around this important issue, especially from the online community.

Breaking News:

Legislation introduced this week will ban social networking, even sites used for educational and professional opportunities. What’s next? HR5319 will censor the communication of our generation and tell us who we can talk to, when and how. Tell Congress that social networking is a movement that we built, a movement that we are going to fight for.

Visit www.mobilize.org/SOS, take action, tell your friends and get mad.

---

The bill blocks the use of these sites in public libraries, which is for many, the only access that they have to a computer. Our hope is to be able to amend the bill to take these facts into consideration. We agree that there need to be safeguards put in place for "sexual predators" and any of other crimes that might occur because of the accessibility of information on these sites, but to ban them in schools (including using school computers afterschool) and public libraries, is for many - banning social networking.

Posted by Mobilize.org on May 15, 2006

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