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KISS
andyring writes "CNN has an interesting article about the increasing trend in electronics to add more and more features, less concise user manuals, and poor marketing, to products, which end up doing nothing more than increasing costs and frustrating users. As an example in the article, most people want cell phones that do one thing - make calls. Yet phones come with games, instant messaging, cameras, etc. You can't even buy a simple cell phone any more. Also cited, 25% of people think they own an HDTV, when the actual number is less than 10%. What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?"
Cell phones have become so fragmented, as most carriers offer multiple handsets with a variety of features which appeal to differing tastes. However, I still refuse to buy a new phone because my carrier still hasn't offered a phone that meets my specific needs. All I want is a good, small, clamshell, tri-mode phone from Verizon with built-in Bluetooth. I could care less about a camera, I already invested in a digital camera with a better resolution, and there seems to be a lot of anti-camera phone sentiment. When I went to get my passport renewed, people had to surrender their batteries.
In terms of user manuals. It's not like a lot of people read them anyway...that's like asking people to read the articles prior to reply here on slashdot. Look at all the good detailed instructions did for getting baby-boomers to program their VCR or time display.
How many software packages actually come with a full set of documentation anymore these days - it's like we are expected to go out any buy the user manual.
HDTV is a tough subject, because the industry has done such a poor job on rolling out HDTV. Not just the manufacturers, but also the stations, cable companies and the damned FCC. But you would think you would know whether or not you have HDTV after seeing what 1080i looks like.
The competing formats of DVD is equally confusing. My father-in-law made the mistake of buying DVD+R discs only to find out that he needed -R for his drive.
What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?
Like most businesses, they listen to only one thing: their bottom line. If you don't need a camera on your phone (and, frankly, who does?) then don't spend the extra few bucks on it. Make sure you tell the person why. There will certainly be some trickle effect of what is said, whether to management, at trade shows or in the media.
Unfortunately you have the KeepingUpWithTheJoneses factor to deal with: Jones(A) gets a new phone with games. Not to be outdone, Jones(B) gets a phone with games and a camera. Jones(C) gets a phone with games and a higher-resolution camera.. Repeat ad infinitum.
This isn't intended soley as potshots against camera phones but against the "Faster, Smaller, Better" upgrade cycle that these manufacturers impose on the consumers. Remember that every dollar you spend is after-tax money. Now think about how much that shiny new widget will really cost before you walk to the cash register. You need the money more than they do.
Trolling is a art,
Comment removed based on user account deletion
10,000 songs,
audiophile quality,
least restrictive DRM,
6 buttons,
iPod.
Of course, on the other hand:
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
(Damn, I've been waiting forever for a flimsy excuse to link to that page.)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
User interfaces should be well-designed and as simple to use as possible. Granted.
Include a quickstart guide with your gear. Good idea.
But for God's sake, don't forget about the concise user manual. I hate buying new gear and not getting a good manual with it. The manual should explain everything the unit can do in every configuration.
If they want to make a simple quickstart guide too, that's great, but don't leave out the full-blown details.
What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?
Um, ok. So, let me get this straight. You want these manufacturers to _not_ take advantage of the people dumb enough to believe they are buying something else. Those 15% of the people that think that they have an HDTV, probably bought something that was overpriced, and might end up buying equipment that would only work to it's fullest with a HDTV system. They're making money off of the stupid. I don't expect them to change. While it would be moral and nice of them to, but since when is capitalism moral and nice? It's about money, and if someone wants to give it to them, they will take it.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
I can see that the author doesn't use emacs.
What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?
Have they visited their proctologists lately?
Sounds like business as usual to me.
I guess I'll never cease to be amazed at the medias propensity to discover the obvious.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
kill everyone in marketing.
I find it interesting to look at the number of high-end replacement devices exist for home theaters. That's a market that's added every feature known to man, and the most loved component is often the Universal Remote that can simplify it to the point of actual usability by Mom. All of the power is still there, but there's a simple, unified interface for MOST users. Apple has done the same thing for years, and does it best in OSX. All the power is there, but the usability is so great that most people never notice. Tivo is an amazingly complex system behind the scenes (by normal person standards,) but the usability is such that again, Mom can use it. You don't have to have a simple product, you just have to make it usable for simple people.
Think back to the pre-digital days of cellphones. The cellphone had status. The smaller the phone, the more status. Remember when the Motorola Startac sold for over $1000? It was so incredibly small! And then of course more and more stuff got integrated onto chips, and lithium batteries came out, and then they had the ability to make phones really really small. These same developments also made them cheaper. The result was that the cellphone lost its status (remember Zoolander's mobile?). So, what is it now? Two things: a practical voice communication tool, of course. And... entertainment, and a new status thing in the form of having more cool features. Have you noticed that cellphones now are getting bigger? There will always be the older generation who want the phone to be as simple and convenient as possible and have no added features, but those are not high-markup sales. In fact those phones are sold in very small margins. The real money is being made on phones with cameras, two color screens, MP3 players, PDA features, push-to-talk, video players, and Java games, all in a three-ounce package that you can take with you. And yes, you can still buy basic phones. You can't buy a phone without a phone book, messaging and a minibrowser anymore, but those features are unobtrusive and users who don't care can just ignore them. For the rest of us, phones are cool.
I like camera phones and phones with web access. But when I go to work, those phones have to stay in my glove box. Not because of the distraction, but because of the nature of the features themselves. Consider this: how many firms would allow a worker to walk around with a cellular, web connected camera? Any camera phone does that. And a PDA phone with blue tooth or IR? You are dreaming. Its the information...its all about the information!
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
The current unit also has a deep hatred of the Sci-Fi channel. If we tune it to Sci-Fi, it shuts itself off. If we tape a Sci-Fi channel show on another VCR and try to play it on ours, it again shuts itself off. Weird.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Or maybe I am just a jaded IT guy?
Maybe jaded against the particular hardware you work with. We have failures among our ~300 PCs every so often, hard disks mainly. The Sun, SGI and (sole) HP machine are damn tanks. When Sol goes red giant in 3 billion years, there will be 4 SGI Origins floating around in space wondering where users went.
Trolling is a art,
And we keep buying stuff because the last batch didn't make us happy; we figure if Johnny bought it, and he seems happy about it, that it will make us happy, too. Every advertising dollar spent is attempting to create needs, not serve them.
Thinking outside my Head
What can be done to make manufacturers get their heads into the real world?
Fire the marketing department.
No, really. Some marketing genius does a study, asks some set of people "Hey, we can do this really neat thing, do you want it?". Each marketing genius in the department does this. Now the department goes to the C level and says "All our studies say that people want x, y, z, and also w".
Then the engineering dept gets the WORD FROM ABOVE, and creates the product. Instant plethora of features. The product gets built, goes to stores, and the MAJORITY of people say "whoa, too complicated".
Why do you think that Windows has a dumbed down menu set?
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
So good of you to spare some free time to correct the flaws of someone who studies and researches usability professionally.
Gimmicks do NOT exist to meet market demand. They are added to CREATE market demand. Cell phones didn't add games because people demanded them; the manufacturers added games and then marketed them as an essential reason to throw away your old phone.
Companies used the gimmicks as a tool for the marketers to create an artificial market demand. Sooner or later, the gimmicks become so silly that even good marketing can't sell them. That's when the crap features disappear, and the market becomes more-or-less stable. That's also the death of a growth-based company, and so manufacturers will do ANYTHING to avoid the natural evolution down the back slope of the bell curve.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
- Less battery life
- Not easily viewable in sunlight
- Not water resistant (even I don't understand this one!)
Manufacturers seem to have forgotten the purpose of mobile phones.Same issue with laptops. I have an pismo laptop from 4 years ago with as much as 10 hours of battery life. If there exists such a system today, I'll buy it but marketeers find it easier to push Ghz, so we get Ghz. This reminds me of radios from the 1960s when boasting "10 transistors" was so important that some manufacturers soldered in dummy transistors!
The first point is that product manufacturers are the ultimate democratic institution. They make what the consumers want.
But more to the point.
For years I would only purchase the cheapest possible microwave. Why? Because they had a knob, and NO temp control.
Microwaving turns out to be pretty non-exact science. I want my left overs heated, I want my popcorn popped.
In order to do this in a "good" microwave, it could take a half a dozen to a dozen gestures setting the time to the second (A totally useless time measure when cooking) and the tempreture to a specific setting (which has no human meaning whatsoever).
In a cheap microwave, it only took a single gesture. Turn the knob to about the right amount of time, and it turns on, cooks for the right amount of time, and shuts itself off.
A few years ago not even cheap microwaves came with knobs. There are a couple of Restraunt grade ones that do (They appreciate the minimum number of steps in a restraunt), but they are hard to locate and very expensive. But I was resigned to my purchase.
I moved into a new home, and it had a built in microwave. A really nice Sharp, with a TON of buttons. With horror I began schemeing how to get rid of the beast.
But the story has a happy ending. I still do exactly the same things I do with the microwave, heat leftovers, and pop popcorn. And the sharp has two buttons that do precisely that. It has a heat leftovers button. And it has a pop popcorn button. 1 Gesture, and now I don't even have to know "how long". The amount of technology to pull this off, is magnitudes greater than my old microwave, but nonetheless, nearly unbelievably my new microwave is simpler to use than the one with just a knob.
The marketplace has come to solve a problem I didn't even really know I had. To make my microwaving life even easier. As with all technology that I buy and love, it is exactly that power of the marketplace that gets me what I want.
"What does this phone do?"
"Well, it makes calls, stores your phone book, and has this nifty flashlight."
I could see more people asking WHY the phone has a flashlight than thinking it to be a "Good Feature". Most folks would consider it an unneeded 'bell and whistle' feature that creates an excuse to charge $50 more for the phone. As opposed to:
"Well, it makes calls, stores your phone numbers, coordinates with your computer, plays games in full color, takes pictures of anything you see fit to take pictures of, sends them to any email address, allows you to play games whenever you are bored or want to spend sone time, lets you send an IM to unobtrusively keep in touch with your coleagues on the go, allows you to play realistic-sounding music for your ring tones, or even record your OWN sound for your ringer..." (And of course 50 other features that sound cool).
Now, see? THIS would strike people as "It does all that for only $99?! COOL!"... However, being able to -USE- all that without a doctorate is another matter for some folks.
Overall, it's simple: The more things they can put on paper under the "features" section, the more likely folks are to buy it if the price is decent, and they think the features will be fun. They never give the DETAILS of the features that would cause people to reconsider.
For example, when I worked for T-Mobile, I had to explain to folks that yes, they could "download" their address book to their phone, like it said in the features, but they had to do it two entries at a time from the T-Mobile web site. Oh, yes, and it used a SMS message to send each entry (At cost, oftentimes). And of course, nothing quite as fun as dealing with an upset parent whose daughter had used 13,000 SMS Text messages in one month by using AIM on her phone... It seems so SIMPLE, and easy to use... and makes a huge bill.
Overall, people are interested in INTERESTING bells and whistles. "I can get a digital camera for $199 or I can get a PHONE with a diital camera and all these other features for $150...", and a flashlight is not considered 'Interesting' to most people. ("I can get a flashlight for $5, or a phone with one for $150...")
@Whee
Manufacturers need to learn that in the information age (which is now!) they need to put more and more info on their websites.
Every product manual should be on the website in PDF!
Even the products that are ten to fifteen years old!
For an example of the best example of providing info, look at Yamaha. They have scanned every manual for every music synthesizer model and variation that they have made and have put these scans (in PDF format) on their web site for free download. Considering that this is refers to several hundred models each with manuals that have several hundred pages, this is incredible customer support!! I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Yamaha musical instrument new or used, for fear that I couldn't operate it.
Plus they did it knowing that it would take years to pay off in additional sales. Great company.
Now for the chumps! Fry's Electronics gets the price here. Every product , yes every product in the store should have a manual on-line on their website.
And,
Every product that they have ever sold in the past ten years should have the manual on their web site. Plus, there should be links to information that people always need to know when they buy stuff there. Like, what type of memory does this motherboard that is on sale this week use? And, 'Can I use this other type of memory for the motherboard that I bought at Fry's three years ago?'.
Usually at Fry's, nobody knows what the answer to your question is. So people buy the wrong product, can't figure out how to get it working, scoop up most of the parts, and bring it back for a refund. Then they put most of the parts back in the box, put shrinkwrap cellophane around it, and stick it back on the shelves at full price.
The only way to tell if the product at Fry's is a dud is by the ratio of returned units to the previously unsold ones. If half the boxes are user returns, don't buy it or you too will probably be back to return it. Like the saying goes: 'A trip to Fry's is two trips to Fry's'.
This monkeyshit mentality wouldn't be so bad if you're not driving fifteen miles each way.
And they could reduce this nonsense by demanding that each supplier provide a manual in PDF form and a list of FAQ that could be put on the Fry's website before the product goes on sale there.
But would they do it, no ef'in way. They just don't give a fuck!
So what't the point?
MORE DOCUMENTATION!
I have an HDTV. It's a nice 63cm Philips, says "HDTV" at the front. About ten years old by now.
Nothing to do with the new standard, but I can see why more people than expected say they have one.
Of course, people have said this kind of things about lots of products, including amateur 35mm cameras. Strangely enough, some folks went to trouble of learning how to use them anyway. Those folks know how the complicated controls work.
That's when the industry changes the controls in the name of "ease of use", thus alienating not only the beginner, but also the person who knew what they were doing before.
One of the things that pisses me off about my digital camera is that I have to dig through menus to change settings like exposure, f-stop, flash on/off, etc. The camera supports them all in theory, but it is hard to use in practice. Let's see, click here, left, down down down, menu... whoops! Lost the shot.
There are cameras that have these controls now, but in my experience they are unjustifiably more expensive just for that design.
Stick to the metaphor, manufacturing guys. If it's a camera, it should be controlled like a camera, even if there's a computer on the inside. That means knobs and dials and stuff that is quick to get at, makes sense if you know what it does, and can be ignored if you don't. Just like the old days.
It is a question of letting the old dog use the new technology without having to learn the "new trick paradign" too. The functions are the same, why change the controls? What's next, point-and-click blenders?
On the other hand, the next generation of car drivers might need a gamepad instead of a steering wheel...
I have a professor who mentioned his cell is years old because all the new, small phones can't punch a signal through his house. He likes the big numbers and easy to hit buttons as well. I bet all the people I see at work during lunch time desperately trying to get a call out by standing near the window and finally going outside would appreciate it more than size as well.
I see dozens of posts saying "people want simplicity." The article is ostensibly making that very point.
But you know what?
People BUY complexity. They could buy a Mac, but they buy the PC because it has 'more software'. They could buy a simple phone, but they buy the one with all the gee-wizz features. They could pay $10 for shareware, but they want Photoshop and Word.
On top of that, it's hard to make things simple. It costs more to make a product easy to use. (Especially with software, where cramming maximal items into the preferences panel seems to be an industry sport.)
People get what they pay for.
The story isn't about cheap-ass phones that break, but about phones that have features that are so poorly implemented that 95% of the users are unable to make use of them, and/or features that 99% of their users don't need or want.
I think a lot of the problem is the rush to market with something new, regardless of actual utility. "We have to have the 2005 line designed by Thursday, and we need a feature the competition doesn't have. Let's have a micro-motorized skin that pulses along its length, allowing it to crawl across the table like a worm!" "Why would we do that?" "Because Sony-Ericsson hasn't done it yet!!!"
So regardless of "what" the function is, or how consumers might use it, it gets thrown into the device. This is most evident in cell phones, where it seems every phone has a calculator, an appointment calendar, a stopwatch, a diving computer, a pedometer, and an altimeter. And the manufacturers trumpet these alleged features as if they add value, when in reality all they do is clutter the interface and suck electrons.
My ideal cell phone would be a small brick I keep clipped to my belt, next to my leatherman. A bluetooth headset would allow me to talk, and my Tungsten would allow me to surf. The phone would still have a speaker, microphone and keypad so I could use it "in manual mode" if I didn't have the headset with me. A screen displaying ten digits would be nice, but optional. And I guess I'd like some kind of powered-on indicator, although the position of an "on-off" switch could suffice.
I find it almost criminal for a phone to have a "backdrop" picture, or a "screen saver", or even color. All these "features" do is to draw down battery power, and add to the visual clutter. They don't make my "phoning experience" easier or faster or more enjoyable. I really don't want a "phoning experience" -- I just want a fucking phone that I can call my wife and tell her I'm going to the Chinese place and ask her if she wants wontons with her cashew chicken!!
Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong, (but I seriously doubt it.)
John
Here I am at College, and I find a cellphone, all by itself, left in the bushes behind a little concrete edge often used as a bench. Looks like an expensive little bugger. I retrieve it. Maybe I could call its owner or maybe some of their friends and let their caller ID tell them whose calling, then maybe one of them can help me return it to its rightful owner. Guess what, I get the darned thing turned on, lots of buttons, each does something, but I will be darned if I can get the phone to make a call. I accessed some sort of clock, some scheduler, probably reset a helluva lot of stuff just trying to get back, I could not get the thing back off, and all I could think of is how fast I am draining the tiny thing's batteries with all those display lights flashing all over the keyboard.
I know once I drain its little battery, I have lost all chance of using it to help me find its owner, as it has nonstandard cells, and I have no way of routing the proper power to the phone's charging connector. Yes, I have top-flight power supplies in the lab which will power damn near anything, but lacking knowledge of what voltage and polarity the phone needs, any attempt to power the phone through the lab supply is apt to be fatal.
I did not wanna take it to lost and found, as once the phone passes through too many hands, it might stay lost forever. That was my attempt of last resort.
Never got a call out. But in a few minutes, the thing started buzzing. Ok, someone's calling me, can I even get on the line. They called me three times before I successfully got voice link. It was the owner, calling from a friend's phone. She was still at the college, frantically searching for her phone.
Man, I felt dumb.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I'll give you one word: design.
The quote at the end of the article gets it right: "The simpler it looks," Nielsen said, "the harder it is to build." Great design exudes simplicity, but it's surprising hard to get right. The iPod did a good job, by focusing on making music, and music alone, available through a simple interface. (I despaired to find you could maintain a calendar and play games on an iPod, but who does that? Fortunately these unnecessary features didn't interfere with the design too much.) My DirecTV DVR gets it mostly right too -- I shudder to think of all the things they could have added (partial show recording? a trashcan? games?) and I'm glad they didn't.
On the other hand (and as the article points out) every cellphone I've seen in the last two years has been a failure. The failure is not in QA, and it's not in documentation. It's certainly not in the user. The failure is in design.
That article lost me the minute the guy started talking about how his camera was too technologically advanced because it had options to force the flash or set long exposure times.
These are options that have been available on cameras for approximately 100 years.
I mean, we have gotten to the point where if technology does not simplify our lives to a ridiculous degree, we blame the technology, even if technology is giving us the same exact features we've always had! What was fine before suddenly becomes burdensome simply because it's digital and our expectations are different. Do we expect to have fewer features in digital products than we did in analog, simply because we're too stupid or impatient to read a damn manual? It seems that way.
I'd like to keep my long exposure, manual focus, forced flash and aperture modes, thanks. I am happy camera makers are continuing to provide these as options on some models and are even filtering them down to less expensive consumer cameras. Not every product needs to pander to the lowest common denominator.
So some people can't figure out how to use the things they buy. Too bad. I say add more features. Many features require little in the way of additional hardware. Why not include them even if they're not used often? Granted, sometimes there are bad interfaces but a bad interface is better than NO interface!
It's sad. Look at what happened to digital watches. They're much more reliable than analog watches and they died only because people couldn't figure out how to set them to the correct time.
On a similar note, I'm beginning to hate PowerPoint. Why does everything have to be broken into bite size pieces? Give me high density information. I'm a big boy. I can read a white paper.
Phones seem to have gotten more complex; perhaps there is hope they emerge as the dominant pocket appliance - it seems sure something will emerge as such, at least to me. I don't want to have to worry about carrying more than one device and yes it would be nice if it had a flashlight and also unlocked my car and started it too.
So, whoever said it is right, phones are getting more complex. This is probably ok if you really think about it.
CD players aren't really, and the same goes for VCRs and DVD players. They can all now be had very very cheaply in their most simple form. This is, I think, a good thing. One might argue, they've been around longer as consumer appliances and they've figured KISS out.
But, I'm not seeing a whole lot of KISS in the software world. Especially in the Windows world.
With the exception of most decent and I mean really decent *nix software, most software seems to have gone on a sugar and steroid fad diet for nearly the past few decade.
Ever see MSDOS 2.2 run on a multi gighertz modern machine? Try it. It's scary fast. What happened?
Ten years ago I used to setup internet stuff in people houses for a local ISP. It was a good way to make $100/hr as it really didn't take more than 45 minutes anyway. I carried around Netscape on one flopy, Eudora, Trumpet Winsock, ftp, telnet and talk on the other floppy.
Quark was 3 megs. Then it was 7 megs. Now it's 300. Is it 100x better? Fuck no, it's not even as good.
Fit enough for an internet setup on a floppy? I'm not sure you could get it to fit on one CD these days.
If any of you out there actually write this stuff: WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? HAVE YOU NO PRIDE?
"Hello World!" Shouldn't be 7 frikkin megs because you're pulling in God knows what class libraries, this can be 42 byte program if you really try.
I swear Windows apps had to go through 3 or 4 generations of hardware upgrades just to get back to as fast as they were before they all went "true 32 bit" and I cringe at the prospect of 64 and maybe even 128 bit apps.
One of the computers I use is a W98 system on fairly contemporary hardware. I still use 3 or 4 16-bit Windows programs I've been carrying with me for over a decade now. They're small, fast do what I want and nothing more.
And all 3 fit on one floppy with room to spare.
I dunno about thit object oriented class library stuff, I really don't know. I wish more people would learn assembler below the C level than keep wanting to go above it with "easier" and "more powerful" languages; I think it's ill advised.
Short term pain for long term gain: you should probably suffer writing software so I don't have to when using it.
Need Mercedes parts ?