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Design Crime
" You have been charged with one count of Design Crime..." | |
Some product designs are wonderful. Some not so much.
Some product designs are mediocre at best - they get the job done, but there's no love lost for them.
And then there's the criminal designs. You know the ones...You have to remove every ancillary gadget that never goes bad to replace the one
widget that was designed to wear out periodically to protect some other part that never wears out.
If found guilty of design crime, the usual sentence is to spend your weekends repairing pro bono the devices belonging to the persons who purchased that product, until you have atoned for your crime.
Inspired by an anno I will fetch here shortly...Here it is:
" Having had to spend a couple hours, waist-deep upside-down in the engine compartment, in order to find a windshield-washer relay module...
— FlyingToaster, Aug 28 2014 "
EDIT: Actually the concept far preceded the anno above - I conceived of the statute and sentencing mode while I was an automotive mechanic for a few years. Seventies Chryslers - EVERYTHING is bolted to the water pump.
[link]
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The relay module, a 2cm square cube, is on the opposite side of the engine-compartment than the washer-motor, alongside another identical'ish module for something and IIRC a blank socket or two. According to the manual it was somewhere in the front passenger-side. If you knew where it was and what it looked like you could maybe see part of it if you held a flashlight just-so. |
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The previous owner had gotten so frustrated trying to figure out why the spritzer wasn't spritzing, he/she'd installed and wired in a new push-button on the dashboard and ran some wires to the motor (which worked). |
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Once the relay was located, removed and verified as the culprit, the $7 replacement cube, with the help of an adrenaline-fueled bit of triple-jointedness, took less than 10 seconds to install. |
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All of which was nothing compared to trying to find and replace the camshaft positioning sensor on the engine (which I finally let a mechanic do). |
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OH!NONONONOOOOO the penalty must be death, death I tell you, death's to good for them!. |
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We used to have milk cartons. fold the top and push to open. Easy fast and no plastic. |
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Now they have a screw on plastic cap. But wait! there's more. underneath the screw on plastic cap there is a pull off plastic lid. It has a tiny plastic ring to pull on. It allmost always breaks. And then you have to cut it open with a knife. |
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This happens in the morning and it makes me want to kill people. |
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Or the peanutbutter. Nowadays underneath the lid of the peanutbutter and the Nutella there is an extra layer of plastic. It is glued to the rim. When you try to take it off it always breaks and you have to peel of a thousand pieces of the rim. |
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This happens in the morning and it makes me want to kill people. |
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And the little tiny cans of tomato paste are sometimes pressurised so that when you open them they spray their contents on the wall. |
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This happens in the evening so it doesn't make me want to kill as many people. |
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These examples surely are design crimes yes? |
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We want to kill the same people that you do. |
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Working as a technician, which I don't do anymore, I've encountered countless design crimes. The worst was servicing Smart Cars. The engine oil has to be pumped out using a special pump, and in order to turn off the dash change oil warning light a very particular combination of button presses has to be made and certain amounts of time given. Crime. I hated working on those little cars, although they are super fun to rip around in. Aside from that most vehicles are not designed with technicians in mind, and most jobs take more time disassembling parts that are in the way than to do the actual job. |
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Sony: all that proprietary XD card and AC adapter
nonsense,
back when they were mighty at least. |
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Ducati: Take 1 motorcycle battery, build a motorcycle
around it. |
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Dishwashers: Put a light in the damned thing, if it's 8am I
may not notice that the sharpest knife I own is now
dangling
unseen waiting for delicate tendons to slice. |
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(Cheap) Samsung Phones: When given the choice to make
an annoying noise and to not make an annoying noise....
go with the annoying noise eh? My colleague has one, it
will beep every 30 seconds after a missed call, this is
apparently unturnoffable. |
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You forgot to mention poor battery life and dire RF performance. |
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No wonder they didn't catch on.. |
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