You have to wonder sometimes whether engineers really think things through, or whether they just play it by ear. Either through lack of foresight or intentional cheapness, it seems that some obvious features are dismissed at hand on products which otherwise are perfectly suited for what they do.
A great example of this revealed itself in a moment’s error over this last weekend. I have an American Power Conversion’s (APC) Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for my three computers at home. It’s a 1500 watt beast, which is actually a little small for the three machines, plus the monitor. I decided that the Windows box did not need to be backed up by battery, as I don’t run it all the time anyway and it doesn’t do anything of value – it’s just a gaming box. So, I went about the elementary task of pulling the UPS out from the wall, unplugging the power cord from one of the battery backed AC outlets and moving it to one of the “surge protection only” outlets. In doing so, I doubled the uptime of the battery on the remaining two systems and dropped the total load from 80% down to 38%.
My engineering mishap occurred when I went to push the UPS back into place. In the process my thumb inadvertently pressed the power button on the front of the unit with about a quarter second of pressure before I realized my mistake. The UPS turned itself off without hesitation and dropped power to both of the Linux boxes. I shook my head in disbelief and powered the unit back on, wondering what drooling idiot decided that the momentary contact, master power switch should be instantaneous, rather than having a pause before dropping power. Even my $40 MP3 player is smart enough to require a three second hold on the button to actually drop power!
Stupid.
Another great example of a bad engineering decision is found in my cell phone. I have a Casio GzOne Type-V, which is capable of being dunked under a meter of water for 30 minutes, dropped on concrete, used as a soccer ball or a car jack, exposed to temperatures up to 140 F at 95% humidity and shrug it all off without the tiniest of whimpers. After quite a bit of research, I finalized my decision making after reading a user review, where his Type-V had fallen off his belt clip while riding his motorcycle at about 45 MPH down the highway. When he went to recover the phone, it had a few scratches on the metal case, but was otherwise fully functional. For a guy who spends his road time on a motorcycle and his off road time falling like Three Stooges’ clockwork into streams and swamps, it was a perfect choice. Like any Mil-Spec brick, it won’t win any fashion awards. It’s rather large and heavy – like a cellphone version of a Hum-Vee. (Personally, I like the looks, but others have expressed dismay at the design.) It feels great in hand and has very clear audio, coupled with easy to use controls and a nice charging cradle with spring loaded contacts, which doesn’t require plugging the phone into a socket. All I need is a phone that works in tough environments, not a PDA. I’ll take this beast over a pile of shattered iPhone’s any day.
So what could be wrong with this phone’s design? It doesn’t have analog roaming capability. You would think that a phone itching to be on the lanyard of outdoor enthusiasts, bikers and specialists in the Navy Seals, would support analog roaming for those times you’re off the beaten path. I can surf the Web with the damn thing, but I can’t make a call or use the GPS from outside digital coverage.
Stupid.
It’s really hard to screw up a device this simple, but I need to replace our alarm clock. It’s like most others, you set both the time and alarm with the typical “Hour” and “Minute” buttons. But the design flaw is a simple one: you need to press the “Alarm” button to set the alarm, but you don’t need to press anything else at all to set the time. Furthermore, the buttons are clustered rather close to the snooze button. More than once trying to hit snooze (or when a cat walks over the top of it) the time has been changed by minutes or hours. How about a “Time” button to hold for setting the time? Would that make any sense?
Stupid.
You can probably think of a dozen things right off the top of your head which meet the same criteria as the above – perfectly functional, until you encounter that one design flaw, that one missing, obvious feature – which makes you shake your head in disbelief that anyone would overlook it, or omit it for a few penny’s profit.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on engineers for all this: as they do have to bow to the whims of the greedy administration twits, wanting to shave pennies everywhere they look. However, some things seem so obvious that I have to shake my head, no matter who made the final call on the design.
Tags: annoyances, annoying, design flaws, engineering, stupidity
