Worse By Design: The Video home > backlash

It's so simple, so very simple, that only a child can do it

The above quote from Tom Lehrer, who was singing about New Math is one of those perverse truths we have to live with as adults. Children are very effective learning machines and can quickly learn and work out how to control the most complex of devices. When I was a child, it was the digital watch, with its four buttons do everything design. I could reverse engineer the operating instructions of any digital watch in seconds (how eighties is that!?).

The one thing any technophobe will admit to you is that they do not know how to set the timer on their video. There has to be a reason for this. It's probably the same reason that has prevented me from ever learning how to set the clock on my stereo, and the same reason that has prevented me from ever using the VideoPlus features on my own video... they just seem to obscure to be bothered with. Plus, if you ever do follow the instructions and try to learn how to control these devices, you find that the sequence of operations is too long to remember, or too badly described to fathom out.

To add insult to injury, a lot of the hardest to use devices come with remote controls that are over complicated and incomprehensible. At some stage, I ought to write about remote control sins in general, but for today, let's focus on why my neighbour failed to grasp the so-called basic operation of his Sharp video recorder. Let me stress that I put no blame on the user here; this is a man who can operate a wide variety of electronic and electrical devices. The steep learning curve is entirely the fault of the designer.

Here are some of the problems with the neighbour's Sharp video recorder's remote control and user interface:

I'm not making this up. I've not misinterpreted the complexity of the user interface. The neighbour accidentally hit two buttons on the control and was unable to work out how to get any channels and how to get rid of a, basically unnecessary, display that had appeared over his picture!

We get suckered by unnecessary features. The new video recorder disappointed my neighbour because its eject feature was not available from the remote control, as it was on his last one. Why should the eject ever be on the remote control? you have to be at the unit to make any use of an ejected tape... the remote control should not have features designed for nearby use - they're redundant. Unfortunately, you get used to things. Sometimes I wish we could start again and redesign completely - set a worthwhile standard!

27 April 2001
Ashley Frieze