Ergonomically Challenged!
The first thing I tend to notice about appliances, cars, and such, is the ergonomics and design. It just bugs the hell out of me when they are immediately and obviously atrocious. I think of it as an insult to the consumer. Do we not deserve better for our financial investment in your product?
Cars are a common factor that most people simply don’t notice. Ever checked to see if your indicator stalk is on the opposite side to your gear lever? Why, what difference does it make? Well, try to indicate change of direction and change gear simultaneously! Then you will understand. Better still try doing that in an emergency when your hand is busy with the indicator stalk instead of being free to dart to the gear lever to change down quickly. Yes I also drive an automatic but I change gears all the time! The joys of the modern 7G-Tronic gearbox! Seven gears at your disposal and no sign of a clutch.
So since it is such a simple task to correct the next question is why it isn’t rectified! The chances are that you are driving a vehicle designed to drive on the opposite side of the road to your own country. Things such as the dashboard are modified and the steering wheel is pushed over to the opposite side but everything else is left as is to save money.
This mostly applies to cheaper vehicles. On some (but, irritatingly, not all) more expensive vehicle these things are addressed and redesigned. Also pay attention to where your ignition key (if you still have one that is) is. For safety sake (read gun tottin’, ruthless hijackers here) it should ideally be facing the centre of the cabin and not within reach of the window where someone can reach in and yank them out, leaving you vulnerable.
Let’s talk about computer items. I have used a trackball instead of a mouse for many years. I have tendinitis and it helps tremendously. Wassis a trackball? Think of it as an upside down mouse with the ball visible alongside the buttons! What ball? You know… those ancient things that had a horrible, clumsy ball on the underside that needed regular cleaning. Long before blue teeth, infrared thingamabobs, and wires that were on fire! Call the fire department a have a fire wire!
I’ve have had a few in my day. Yes I am old enough for things to have happened in my day. At one point my trusty trackball was so old it was all but clicked out. Literally, I even gave it open heart surgery to slip in an spacer to allow the power thing to continue on its last click!
So I bought a really snazzy one. Black rubber grips on the side, nice brushed silver paint, and a plethora of buttons all over! A grand total of eight dem thar buttons! Fantastic!
First thing I notice is that you cannot click more than 2 or 3 buttons without moving your hand all over the damn thing. It really defeats the whole object of letting your hand rest comfortable over the trackball without having to move it. Before you ask, no, it was not a left handed trackball. I also thought so at first and tried it out.
Did no one ever try out the trackball before sending the mock-up to full production and launching an expensive, ergonomically challenged, badly designed product into the market? Even if you had lengthy fingers suited for a concert pianist, were delightfully double jointed, and not afflicted with tendinitis, you couldn’t possibly comfortably reach all eight masterful buttons! It was a very expensive mistake and I have since gone back to the cheapest and oldest product in the company’s stable which IS ergonomically comfortable even though it suffers from button envy.
I have two hard drives in nifty external housings. Nice and portable. One is for an older IDE hard drive and the other a brand, spanking, new SATA disk! It is a beautiful looking item that stands proudly on my desk and safe guards my data.
It has a lovely REAL brushed aluminium casing, complete with a cooling fan that is so quiet that you don’t even know it is on. Ordinarily this would not be a bad thing. The power indicator lamp, however, is on the rear of the unit, mixed amongst the power and data cable! Not too clever. I sometimes wish the fan was noisy so I would know to switch it off.
The older external casing is similarly challenged but in reverse! It has the power indicator on the front, casting a lovely blue hue, but the power switch at the back under the cables so one has to run the risk of electrocution in fumbling about blindly around the back to switch it off.
The two external hard drive casings are a typical example of really bad planning. There is really only three items to consider; cables in the back, power switch and indicator on the front of the unit. It really is not a stretch of creativity (or expense) to get it right!
On a last note… have manufacturers been utilising cable that shrinks in the wash? How greedy have they gotten to provide cables shorter that my eyelashes to products in order to increase profits!
First they started excluding plugs with appliances and now what? We will have get our own electrical wire, plugs, and electrician to set it all up too?
Oh wait! They could send us all the diodes and mercury laden bits unassembled and we could construct our own DVD players much like expectant fathers assemble cribs for their new bundles of joy!
They will naturally charge us more for this delightful pleasure in our already busy enough existence.
