Instruction Manuals

I just spent 20 minutes outside in my driveway sweating in the front seat of my wife’s car trying to set the damn clock on her new car stereo. Unbelievable!!! Sometimes I can’t believe how little we have progressed toward making technology easy to use. It feels like we are going backwards in time.

This is from an engineer with the manual open in front of him. I did exactly what they tell you to do and was getting nowhere. Finally after trying countless different ways to get to the clock setting menu, by sheer chance I found the right arcane combination of button presses and tilting the “multi-control” up down left right, push in, turn right, turn left, etc. etc. etc. I discovered that they left out a few critical steps before you start with the sequence in the book and they never tell you how to exit the process. Unbelievable!

When I say we are going backward, this is what I mean: In my 12-year-old suburban, I have a stereo that still works great. It is one of the larger format GM style units which allows for buttons that are actually readable without leaning over to get close to the thing – even at night. To set the clock there are two small inconspicuous buttons marked HR and MIN. All you need to do to set the clock is hold down either one of these for a few seconds and it automatically goes into the clock setting mode. You then press the appropriate button until the display reads what you want.

No need to worry about AM or PM, they assume that you have the IQ to know whether it is 8 in the morning versus 8 at night. When you are done, you leave it alone for about 5 seconds and it reverts to normal mode and the time is set. When daylight savings time comes around, I can change the hour while I’m sitting at a stoplight – it takes less than 10 seconds. No manual required, no 15 step process, I just reach over and voila’ it’s done.

I have probably set over fifty different digital clocks in my lifetime and none were as non-intuitive as this Pioneer DEH-P30001B unit. Some are a little more complicated than the one in my Suburban, but none come anywhere close to this %$#@** Pioneer unit. Just so the people at Pioneer don’t think I’m ganging up on them, I had a Sony car stereo a while back that was just as bad, except the instructions were better. The problem with the Sony one was the clock would not keep good time so I had to reset it every month or two. After about 4 times I was eventually able to go through the multi-step process without hunting for the manual. Another fine piece of engineering designed by computer nerds with no regard for ergonomics.

By the way, this stereo has a 51 page operation manual crammed to the gills with instructions on how to access the hundreds of features that this fine stereo can handle. Impressive, but good luck remembering how to access most of them unless you have the infinite patience to sit in your driveway with the book and do a lot of trial and error. Please refer to a previous post about the application of intuitive design principles in complex electronics. Nice work Pioneer.

Products That Don't Suck

Call me pretentious but I want to start a trend. The trend I want to start is for all you designers of electronic items to pay more attention to how the new customer sees your product. Test the product on neophytes and then redesign the product and retest ad infinitum until you are satisfied that everyone gets the value from your product that you are promising.

After many frustrating experiences with digital cameras and kitchen appliances, stereo equipment, cars, etc., I'm convinced that companies do not do enough prototype testing. Here are my suggestions:

• Develop your product so that 90% of your customers do NOT need a user manual to do everything they expect it to do.
• Always (if possible), incorporate an interactive user guide into the product to explain the more advanced functions.
• If there is more than one element, design the packaging to explain exactly what each part is for so they don’t need a manual. If necessary, provide a separate assembly guide that goes step by step GRAPHICALLY.

Stated another way, design your product so it is totally intuitive to operate for all the basic functions, AND so that it interactively guides the customer toward mastering the more advanced functions AND is a piece of cake to put together and/or set up.

Seems like a reasonable goal, right?

Not simple at all. In fact, it adds a tremendous amount of work to the design process. But here’s the thing. That is where the time should be spent, not by the thousands or millions of people who purchase the product trying to figure out how to work it. The whole idea of paper instructions is rapidly being replaced by some sort of digital media anyway. Since memory is now very cheap, why not incorporate the user guide into the product itself and design it to be interactive?

I’m not talking about just loading images of a standard formatted user manual into your digital camera. I’m talking about an AI interface where the camera judges what you are trying to do and asks you relevant questions to lead you to the answer quickly. Cameras are an excellent example of complexity gone wild. Even geeks need help here.

The critical thing is that the controls are designed to make the basic functions simple and intuitive so your customer can immediately start using the camera or GPS unit or DVR. You want them to feel a sense of accomplishment and validation for making the purchase.

Then you want them to become your evangelists, especially the ones who are inclined to submit articles to technology websites where people increasingly go to before making a buying decision. And that is the key to taking the product to the tipping point - word of mouth is more powerful than any traditional ad campaign in this internet enabled society.

But as someone once said, word of mouth marketing is only a good idea if your product doesn’t suck. I’m counting on the instant feedback aspect of the internet to fuel the trend towards intuitive design. It could happen.

Thank God For High Priced Gasoline

With all the renewed interest in PV technology (photovoltaic) I am revisiting some thoughts I’ve had over the years about the viability of putting one of these solar panels on my roof. After some brief checking, it seems that the price of residential systems for a medium size tract home is still too high for the average family and the payoff would take something like 15-20 years even if you live in the sunbelt (as I do). But even worse, this is a system that may only deliver 50% of your electricity needs.

Some firmly believe that massive utility-based systems stationed outside of town are the answer. Living in the middle of Los Angeles, I don’t think that is necessarily the best solution, mainly due to the huge energy demands of a metropolitan area that extends for a hundred miles.

Instead, I prefer the distributed approach, kind of like PCs versus mainframes. Of course, this requires the development of cheap PV systems that pay for themselves in 3-5 years. My opinion is that the tipping point for PV installations will be when inexpensive solar roofing tiles come on the market. This is not at all unrealistic and there are several companies tackling that problem as we speak.

There are a few other things happening that will make PV installations even more attractive:

• The cost of electricity will continue to go up, probably at an accelerated rate as demand increases and production costs increase.
• The emergence of electric vehicles that you charge up at home is not too far off. This is a whole subject in itself. I predict that in many communities more and more people will buy electric golf cart type vehicles for short trips to the market.
• The steady growth of electronic gadgets in our homes will continue unabated.

All these things and more will make the ability to capture free energy from your roof increasingly attractive. At some point, it will become a critical selling point when you go to purchase a house. No PV system = no sale.

Although I continue to believe that nuclear power should be a much bigger player in our energy plan (you need to generate electricity when the sun is not shining !!!), I just don’t see it expanding much until we can economically blast all of our nuclear waste off to Venus. Of course then there will immediately materialize an environmental group lobbying to save the environment of Venus.

The other major (clean) options besides PV are wind, wave energy, hydroelectric, and geothermal. I just came back from China so coal is definitely not on my list unless we are successful in converting it to a clean burning alternative. Of these other options, the largest potential source of energy is clearly solar and thankfully there are a whole host of companies working to develop inexpensive solutions to capturing solar energy.

We can thank the price of gasoline for finally creating the incentive to work on this problem.

Journey With My Nano

Around October 2006 I had an attack of sciatica down my left leg, a common byproduct of sitting at a desk for 10-12 hours a day. For anyone unfamiliar, it’s usually caused by a pinched or inflamed nerve that can get so bad it gives you pain 24 hours a day. For whatever reason, my pain was in my left hip radiating down my thigh. Readjusting my postion sometimes helped for a while but that was working less and less. I even had pain when I was driving.

So rather than getting hooked on Vicodin or Ibuprofen, I started walking 2 miles every other morning. I live in a hilly neighborhood with quiet tree-lined streets, a really pleasant place to walk. Not only is it a nice environment with no traffic, but it is uphill all the way to the half way point which is perfect for my purposes. I get a pretty good workout if I push myself to do it in 30 minutes and I suffer no ill effects at all. So after a couple of weeks, the pain was gone and hasn’t come back and I’m sure the walking has improved my general health.

The thing that really makes it work for me is my iPod. First I timed exactly how long it took to get to the half way point and then back home. Then I selected songs that had a good tempo that would push me on the uphill portion. The trick was to select the songs so that I would arrive at the top of the hill just when a particular song was starting. On my walk it is a place where you turn the corner and are facing east just as the sun is rising; it’s a kind of spiritual point for me.

So, for that next song I chose The Prayer, sung by Cantor Alisa Pomerantz and David Propis. There is something very personl about that particular rendition of “The Prayer.” I like the ones by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli or Josh Groban but I guess it is the Hebrew in this one that makes me think of my daughter Amy – it makes coming to the top of the hill and walking toward the sunrise a very special moment in my day.

So get yourself an iPod, load some songs into it and set up a playlist that motivates you to get off your butt and enjoy some fresh air. Believe me, it is not only good for the body but it is like a form of meditation – it fuels the soul too.