I`ve finally tried using our car`s radio, which is embarrassing, since we bought the car more than two years ago. But this radio is one of those modern techno-things, like digital watches and microwave ovens, that seem to be designed with a secret agenda, which is to mortify us and break our spirits.
It has 12 knobs, switches, buttons and push bars, and some of the knobs double as buttons, while some of the buttons double as knobs. Explaining how all that works takes up five pages of the owner`s manual, with diagrams.
What makes the radio such a tough techno-nut to crack is that you have to watch the road while you fiddle with it, which I did the other day. Twisting the radio`s ”power” knob didn`t turn it on, but when I accidentally bumped the knob the readout lit up green and the speakers let out a hi-fi howl. I pushed a button labeled ”fade,” but the howl didn`t fade. The button just slid in and stayed.
At a stoplight, I pulled out the owner`s manual, which said pushing the buttons put them in a ”hidden” position. By then, the light had changed and horns were honking behind me. So I turned off the radio.
I`ll probably take another shot at it in about two more years, if everything else goes OK.
I should work on our telephone first. It`s supposed to automatically dial our 12 most-often-called numbers at the push of a button, but in fact it can`t automatically dial diddly. That`s because it would take all Saturday morning to program it, which requires pressing buttons in arcane sequences.
In the Pre-Silicon Period, you just picked up a telephone and dialed. You didn`t need an engineering degree from MIT. But a study by Laurence Feldman, a marketing expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reveals that today half of us find our high-tech possessions too complex to operate.
Why are these things so befuddling? Experts say it`s because of something that might be called the Gadget Gap. And they say it`s not our fault.
Silence is not golden
”It`s a conspiracy of silence,” says Don Norman, a leader in the burgeoning movement to make things easier to use and the author of ”The Design of Everyday Things” (Doubleday, $12.95). He argues that we`re victims of our own shame: ”When things don`t work right, we all think it`s our own fault, and nobody admits having trouble, so nothing changes.”
Norman does have an engineering degree from MIT and a doctorate in something called mathematical psychology, but things fuddle him, too. Norman admits getting flummoxed by VCRs, hotel showers, kitchen stoves, light switches and doors.
Norman just sort of sidled into the Gadget Gap issue. He was studying mistakes, including his own flubs, because ”human error” gets blamed for at least 75 percent of all industrial accidents.
He consulted with the nuclear power and aviation industries. ”But the more I studied human error, like the accident at Three Mile Island, the more it didn`t seem to be people`s fault, but the design of the equipment they were using.” For instance, he found that nuclear power plant operators are required to consult thick manuals, but often no place is provided to put these tomes except on top of the control panel, where the books can inadvertently move switches.
Then Norman spent a sabbatical in Britain. ”I got disgusted with English water taps and things,” he says. ”And I realized that the stuff I`d been learning about the design of nuclear power plants and airliner cockpits also applies to faucets and doors.”
It`s only natural
Norman advocates ”natural design,” which means using principles like visibility to create products that we understand intuitively, without having to think about how they work.
An example of the opposite was a car I recently rented at an airport:
When I parked it, I couldn`t get the key out. There was no manual in the car, and it was a week before a smart hotel bellhop figured out that extracting the key required moving the automatic shift lever one notch BEYOND ”Park.” But that position was unmarked, a vehicular version of ”I`ve Got a Secret.”
Another principle that designers often ignore is ”natural mapping,”
which means arranging controls so it`s clear what they do. Norman cites kitchen stoves: The four burners are arranged in a square, but the four controls for the burners-and the oven controls-are usually in a straight line. To be sure you turn on the right burner, you have to peer down at little symbols or code letters next to the controls, ”LR, LF, RR, RF.”
”If they`d just arrange the controls in a square, to match the layout of the burners, you`d know the right control just by looking,” Norman says.
Norman cites one more natural design principle: feedback. For example, when I make a call at home with our upstairs telephone, I hear a tone each time I push a button, which assures me I`ve done a good job of button pushing. With our downstairs phone, admittedly one of those cheapies you get free
”with your paid subscription,” when I push the buttons I hear only a continual tapping sound, as if woodpeckers were on the line. With no feedback, I`m not sure I`m getting through.
Designers who ignore principles like feedback, visibility and mapping frazzle our synapses. In fact, says U. of I.`s Feldman, more than half the owners of high-tech products never use all the features. Meanwhile, the features keep coming.
And coming … and coming
RCA`s new TV remote control has 38 buttons. Yamaha`s ”Digital Sound Field Processor” for stereos allows you-at the push of various combinations of 12 buttons-to make the music sound the way it would in your choice of 23 different places, such as Freiburg Cathedral, the Village Gate or even Anaheim Stadium. You can buy an electronic Bible (the words appear on a screen), an electronic English-French-Spanish phrase translator, and a talking VCR.
”All these controls-what does what?” Norman asks, disgusted, as we sit in his living room, where he is exhibiting what must be the world`s largest private collection of TV and VCR remote controls.
I found myself thinking of Mr. Kurtz`s dying words in ”Heart of Darkness”: ”The horror! The horror!” In particular, I remembered that to adjust my own TV`s controls, I need to use a flashlight because the knobs are hidden in a dim recess under the screen. To operate my VCR, I must literally prostrate myself before it on the floor because the TV table is designed to put it down there. Meanwhile, on the control panel, I can`t tell which buttons the labels refer to, because there are so many buttons.
”A VCR is designed by a technician or engineer,” explains Norman. ”He doesn`t take into account that the average user lacks his specialized knowledge, and so you end up with rows of tiny buttons.”
It is that proliferation of buttons, readouts, dials and switches, as electronics comes to dominate the technological gene pool, that has brought the design issue to a head. When the scientific study of design began after World War II, it focused on ”ergonomics,” the fitting of products to the human body. But now, say the experts, the focus should shift to include the constraints of the human mind.
Technology as jewelry
Melody Carswell, a professor of engineering psychology at the University of Kentucky, says that when she asks her classes to suggest design strategies for various consumer products, ”the engineering students and the other students in the class have entirely different points of view.” She says it isn`t that engineers lack common sense, but that their common sense is different from that of non-technical people because of their specialized education.
But technological complexity is not the entire problem. Usually, industrial design is taught in art or architecture schools. As a result, many designers focus on aesthetics instead of utility.
”I gave talks in Japan on design, using a Ricoh camera as an example,”
says Norman. ”It had black buttons on a black background. When the company was asked why, they said any other color scheme would spoil the looks.”
We consumers aren`t blameless-we`re often dazzled by toggles and switches. And many things we buy are for looks, not utility. It is technology as jewelry. ”Why does anyone need a $5,000 watch that doesn`t keep time any better than a $20 watch?” asks Norman.
Gee whiz, we`re techno-drunk
Still, bad design isn`t our fault. In fact, it`s often because the designers fail to consult us. ”Whether consumers participate depends on how enlightened a company is,” says Norman.
According to Thomas Hustad, a marketing expert at Indiana University`s business school, one reason corporations often eschew consumer testing is to speed new models to market. ”We`ve automated the design-and-delivery process so much that it can be faster to just keep putting out new variations of a product to replace ones that fail,” says Hustad, who is past president of the Product Development and Management Association, an international group dedicated to improving the process of product innovation.
Meanwhile, designers get techno-drunk. ”They`re carried away by the gee- whiz possibilities-it doesn`t cost much to add this extra function, so let`s throw it in,” says Hustad. ”The result is that technology is outstripping our ability to consume it.”
Says Hustad: ”We`re at a transitional point. The next element for success in the marketplace will be simplicity-we`ve had our jolly fun with whizbang, and now we have to apply this power to the real world of the user.” He says one solution to our technology imbroglio is more technology. For instance, when you buy an electronic product you might telephone the manufacturer`s talking computer, which would walk you through the programming. Or the computer might program it for you, over the telephone wire.
Or-spooky thought-will the new technology just add more layers of complexity?
Signs of salvation
It`s up to the designers-only they can save us from technological angst. Norman, despite his impatience with user-oblivious product design, thinks they`re up to itand sees some breaks in the technological clouds. Recently a representative from Ricoh walked into his office to announce a major project to make the company`s products more ”user centered.”
Remote controls may be getting saner, too. Mitsubishi recently came out with a cigar-shaped wand with only the basic buttons. Unfortunately, it omits the one Norman says is used the most: ”Mute,” for turning off the sound during commercials. The company also offers remotes with illuminated LCD readouts and buttons. And Sony now has a remote with just seven basic controls. ”The one error-true of most remotes-is that they made the `Power`
button too easy to find, since you only use it to turn the set on or off, and you don`t want to accidentally push it in the dark,” complains Norman.
Still, he sees encouraging signs that product design may be getting better. In response to disgruntled consumers, companies like Mitsubishi and Sony are working to make user manualsand TV on-screen instructions easier to understand.
Sure. But now that I`ve been Normanized, I want to know why nobody thought of all this a lot earlier.
