If you create a product that has to be sold in many countries, you have to provide a manual in all those languages.
Your options: 1. You provide the manual for each language in every box. This gets expensive (lots of manuals to print, large/heavy box = higher shipping cost). Customers don't like getting a 900-page manual, of which only 50 pages are relevant to them. 2. You divide and conquer. Each language or group of languages gets its own box and manual. Now you have dozens of box designs and manuals to keep track of, each with their own part number etc. 3. Avoid the problem: stick a quick-reference guide with some pictures and a URL of the manual in the box. You get a small, light box and only one part number. And you get the ability to update the manual.
House prices these days are based on two incomes per household, in 1915 that would have been 1 income/household. House prices have been climbing faster than inflation for a long time.
Lack of translators? No. I write manuals for a living and we've never had a lack of good translators (and we tested their translations). What you do get is cheapskate companies unwilling to pay for a good translation so they either let Google auto-mangle the translation or they illegally don't provide them at all.
I suspect every driver is a bad driver on occasion. Humans aren't machines, even the best-trained professionals make the occasional mistake. I know I do, despite several advanced driving courses and a rigorous attitude to driving (no distractions, etc.).
Those in their 20s also tend to take more risks than their elders, and don't yet recognize when they're too drunk to be doing that, leading to stupid stunts and drunk driving.
How is it not possible to run a welding torch over the weak seams? Sure, it's a couple hours to remove the seats and some trim, but that's still got to be a lot cheaper than scrapping the whole car.
By that reasoning, you'd have to bring up mistreatment of gay people in just about every story that is about human history of up until a few decades ago. Why the selective outrage in Bletchley Park stories?
It's quite remarkable these people were able to build a working replica, when all Bombes were destroyed after WW2 and its design kept secret. All they had to go on was people's recollections and the odd bit smuggled out here and there. And then they went and did the same for the Colossus.
During WW2, homosexuality seems to have been mostly ignored. Turing's arrest and conviction wasn't until 1952, and had nothing to do with his life at Bletchley. So why dredge this up every time there's a story about Bletchley Park?
I recently saw a documentary that referred to this as an early version of cloud computing: Bletchley Park sent intercepted messages and menus (Bombe settings) to the US via telegraph cables, where they were run and the results returned.
AIU it was the other way round. The Polish team developed the codebreaking method using their own resources (notably, they were able to reconstruct the rotor wiring just by analyzing coded messages). They approached the French because they wanted to share their knowledge before the country was overrun. Also, changes made by the Germans meant the problem had become more complex and vastly more machines and personnel were needed to break the new codes with any regularity - resources the Polish cypher bureau didn't have.
Diesels are still common, although it varies a bit by country. The UK famously had (has?) diesel-powered high-speed trains (HST 125). In the Netherlands, France and Germany, diesel trains (passengers and freight) are common on less traveled routes (where the investment in installing overhead catenary wouldn't pay off). I don't think electro-diesels are the most common diesel type, but that's just from my limited observations.
and Times New Roman is one of the smallest fonts I've seen, making it suitable for reasonable-quality printed output only. A PDF with text in Times New Roman is painful to read until you really crank up the zoom factor. Something like Verdana takes up twice the space.
Times New Roman was designed in 1929 for the (London) Times newspaper, with the goal of fitting as much text as possible on a page. Font design has moved on since then, fonts are available that are more readable than Times New Roman while taking up the same amount of space.
EV1 used batteries that are way behind the state of the art now (lead-acid with 16 kWh, later NiMH with 25 kWh capacity). To get enough range, it used high-tech, expensive manufacturing to get a low weight and low Cd, and it had only 2 seats. GM might be able to reuse the motor and its electronics, but they didn't do that for the Bolt (has a 150 kW motor where EV1 had 100 kW). And speaking of the Bolt: GM went with a from-scratch design for the Bolt rather than digging up their EV1 archive. That should say someting about the present-day value of the EV1 research.
I don't buy that. His reaction to being offered marihuana didn't look like 'seasoned user', more like 'total beginner'. When you work 120 hours/wk, you don't need drugs to make dumb statements. The fatigue alone is more than enough.
As for $420, he said '420 has better karma than 419' which I found an obvious reference to 419 scams.
The paper describes something that happens in the real world: features going unused because the users don't read the documentation and/or the software makes it look too complicated. Wishing this phenomenon would go away doesn't work.
The recommendations at the end of the paper are worth checking out.
We are not suggesting that designers avoid including additional features completely or that all mention of features should be excluded from product promotion, but it is about finding the right balance and the correct features for the product.
All too often, programmers add features to a program haphazardly, making documenting those features a pain in the ass. The answer to that is not to remove those features or to hide them under a hamburger menu, and the paper does not advocate for those irritating solutions.
If the level of complexity on the product is necessary, Bishop (2008) suggested that it can be addressed by re-arranging features and functions. For example, the complexity can be shifted out of the user experience into manufacture or automationâ"and therefore be âtamedâ(TM). Bishop claimed that this critical task is the burden of designers. McGrenere and Moore (2000) and Redish (1989) cited the training wheels interfaceâ"a real but simpler system for users to learn on.
There's a world to be gained with actual improvements to the workflow of a program (as opposed to rearranging the deckchairs). It's unfortunate that companies have replaced human factors specialists/interaction designers with 'UX people' who make idiotic decisions, but that replacement is not advocated by this paper.
For a long time now, our days haven't been in phase with the solar day. The time we are awake extends far more into the PM than the AM. Following this convention (as the DST-always folks propose) makes at least as much sense as trying to synchronize our clocks with a variable phenomenon like solar apex. Social convention is a powerful thing, and now that we don't depend on the Sun to calculate time, we can choose a time standard that suits our lives, instead of the other way round.
Congratulations on not only not reading TFA, but missing the point of the headline: IGNobel Prize.
And congratulations for not getting the point the research paper made.
We found that manuals are not read by the majority of people, and most do not use all the features of the products that they own and use regularly. Men are more likely to do both than women, and younger people are less likely to use manuals than middle-aged and older ones. More educated people are also less likely to read manuals. Over-featuring and being forced to consult manuals also appears to cause negative emotional experiences. Implications of these findings are discussed.
The paper does not advocate for the sort of UI stupidity you describe!
I'd sure like to see a list of specific industries that will be moving to Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, et.al.to take advantage of the cheap labor. And why not move work to Afghanistan or Mongolia?
Afghanistan, and a number of countries in Africa, are not going to be a popular outsourcing destination because of political instability.
- How to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie - Anne Bishop's series 'The courtyards of the Others' (a wonderfully original take on vampires and werewolves, with worldbuilding on par with JK Rowling) - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, JK Rowling - British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle, Daniel Sharp
Slashdot Mirror
If you create a product that has to be sold in many countries, you have to provide a manual in all those languages.
Your options:
1. You provide the manual for each language in every box. This gets expensive (lots of manuals to print, large/heavy box = higher shipping cost). Customers don't like getting a 900-page manual, of which only 50 pages are relevant to them.
2. You divide and conquer. Each language or group of languages gets its own box and manual. Now you have dozens of box designs and manuals to keep track of, each with their own part number etc.
3. Avoid the problem: stick a quick-reference guide with some pictures and a URL of the manual in the box. You get a small, light box and only one part number. And you get the ability to update the manual.
House prices these days are based on two incomes per household, in 1915 that would have been 1 income/household. House prices have been climbing faster than inflation for a long time.
Lack of translators? No. I write manuals for a living and we've never had a lack of good translators (and we tested their translations). What you do get is cheapskate companies unwilling to pay for a good translation so they either let Google auto-mangle the translation or they illegally don't provide them at all.
Every e-bike has a control system and display built in, and they all include a speedometer.
Satnav is the only real concern here.
I suspect every driver is a bad driver on occasion. Humans aren't machines, even the best-trained professionals make the occasional mistake. I know I do, despite several advanced driving courses and a rigorous attitude to driving (no distractions, etc.).
Those in their 20s also tend to take more risks than their elders, and don't yet recognize when they're too drunk to be doing that, leading to stupid stunts and drunk driving.
So use a spot welder rather than a torch, and duplicate the intended welding pattern. Still not rocket science.
How is it not possible to run a welding torch over the weak seams? Sure, it's a couple hours to remove the seats and some trim, but that's still got to be a lot cheaper than scrapping the whole car.
By that reasoning, you'd have to bring up mistreatment of gay people in just about every story that is about human history of up until a few decades ago. Why the selective outrage in Bletchley Park stories?
It's quite remarkable these people were able to build a working replica, when all Bombes were destroyed after WW2 and its design kept secret. All they had to go on was people's recollections and the odd bit smuggled out here and there.
And then they went and did the same for the Colossus.
During WW2, homosexuality seems to have been mostly ignored. Turing's arrest and conviction wasn't until 1952, and had nothing to do with his life at Bletchley. So why dredge this up every time there's a story about Bletchley Park?
I recently saw a documentary that referred to this as an early version of cloud computing: Bletchley Park sent intercepted messages and menus (Bombe settings) to the US via telegraph cables, where they were run and the results returned.
using data given to them by the French
AIU it was the other way round. The Polish team developed the codebreaking method using their own resources (notably, they were able to reconstruct the rotor wiring just by analyzing coded messages). They approached the French because they wanted to share their knowledge before the country was overrun. Also, changes made by the Germans meant the problem had become more complex and vastly more machines and personnel were needed to break the new codes with any regularity - resources the Polish cypher bureau didn't have.
Diesels are still common, although it varies a bit by country. The UK famously had (has?) diesel-powered high-speed trains (HST 125). In the Netherlands, France and Germany, diesel trains (passengers and freight) are common on less traveled routes (where the investment in installing overhead catenary wouldn't pay off). I don't think electro-diesels are the most common diesel type, but that's just from my limited observations.
but I just can't be bothered.
and Times New Roman is one of the smallest fonts I've seen, making it suitable for reasonable-quality printed output only. A PDF with text in Times New Roman is painful to read until you really crank up the zoom factor.
Something like Verdana takes up twice the space.
Times New Roman was designed in 1929 for the (London) Times newspaper, with the goal of fitting as much text as possible on a page. Font design has moved on since then, fonts are available that are more readable than Times New Roman while taking up the same amount of space.
There are thousands of model 3s wasting away in dirt fields in California and around the country.
Pics or it didn't happen.
EV1 used batteries that are way behind the state of the art now (lead-acid with 16 kWh, later NiMH with 25 kWh capacity). To get enough range, it used high-tech, expensive manufacturing to get a low weight and low Cd, and it had only 2 seats.
GM might be able to reuse the motor and its electronics, but they didn't do that for the Bolt (has a 150 kW motor where EV1 had 100 kW). And speaking of the Bolt: GM went with a from-scratch design for the Bolt rather than digging up their EV1 archive. That should say someting about the present-day value of the EV1 research.
I don't buy that. His reaction to being offered marihuana didn't look like 'seasoned user', more like 'total beginner'. When you work 120 hours/wk, you don't need drugs to make dumb statements. The fatigue alone is more than enough.
As for $420, he said '420 has better karma than 419' which I found an obvious reference to 419 scams.
The paper describes something that happens in the real world: features going unused because the users don't read the documentation and/or the software makes it look too complicated. Wishing this phenomenon would go away doesn't work.
The recommendations at the end of the paper are worth checking out.
We are not suggesting that designers avoid including additional features completely or that all mention of features should be excluded from product promotion, but it is about finding the right balance and the correct features for the product.
All too often, programmers add features to a program haphazardly, making documenting those features a pain in the ass.
The answer to that is not to remove those features or to hide them under a hamburger menu, and the paper does not advocate for those irritating solutions.
If the level of complexity on the product is necessary, Bishop (2008) suggested that it can be addressed by re-arranging features and functions. For example, the complexity can be shifted out of the user experience into manufacture or automationâ"and therefore be âtamedâ(TM). Bishop claimed that this critical task is the burden of designers.
McGrenere and Moore (2000) and Redish (1989) cited the training wheels interfaceâ"a real but simpler system for users to learn on.
There's a world to be gained with actual improvements to the workflow of a program (as opposed to rearranging the deckchairs). It's unfortunate that companies have replaced human factors specialists/interaction designers with 'UX people' who make idiotic decisions, but that replacement is not advocated by this paper.
For a long time now, our days haven't been in phase with the solar day. The time we are awake extends far more into the PM than the AM. Following this convention (as the DST-always folks propose) makes at least as much sense as trying to synchronize our clocks with a variable phenomenon like solar apex.
Social convention is a powerful thing, and now that we don't depend on the Sun to calculate time, we can choose a time standard that suits our lives, instead of the other way round.
Congratulations on not only not reading TFA, but missing the point of the headline: IGNobel Prize.
And congratulations for not getting the point the research paper made.
We found that manuals are not read by the majority of people, and most do not use all the features of the products that they own and use regularly. Men are more likely to do both than women, and younger people are less likely to use manuals than middle-aged and older ones. More educated people are also less likely to read manuals. Over-featuring and being forced to consult manuals also appears to cause negative emotional experiences. Implications of these findings are discussed.
The paper does not advocate for the sort of UI stupidity you describe!
I'd sure like to see a list of specific industries that will be moving to Ghana, Liberia, Uganda, et.al.to take advantage of the cheap labor. And why not move work to Afghanistan or Mongolia?
Afghanistan, and a number of countries in Africa, are not going to be a popular outsourcing destination because of political instability.
Microplastics are not uniquely dangerous. Microscopic anything non-biodegradable can be a problem when it gets into the food chain.
- How to win friends and influence people, Dale Carnegie
- Anne Bishop's series 'The courtyards of the Others' (a wonderfully original take on vampires and werewolves, with worldbuilding on par with JK Rowling)
- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, JK Rowling
- British Secret Projects 5: Britain's Space Shuttle, Daniel Sharp