What Do You Get When You Cross a Computer with an Alarm Clock?


A computer! I just purchased an expensive new clock-radio for my bedroom, a JVC FS-2000. It has a very sophisticated computer brain and offers high fidelity, digital sound, and lots of features. It wakes me up at a preset time by playing a CD, and it has the delicacy and intelligence to slowly fade up the volume when it begins to play at 6:00 a.m. This feature is really pleasant and quite unique, and it compensates for the fact that I want to hurl the infuriating machine out the window.

It's very hard to tell when the alarm is armed, so it occasionally fails to wake me up on a Monday and rousts me out of bed early on a Saturday. Sure, it has an indicator to show the alarm is set, but that doesn't mean it's useful. The clock has a sophisticated alphanumeric LCD that displays all of its many functions. The presence of a small clock symbol in the upper-left corner of the LCD indicates the alarm is armed, but in a dimly lit bedroom the clock symbol cannot be seen. The LCD has a built-in backlight that makes the clock symbol visible, but the backlight only comes on when the CD or radio is explicitly turned on. There's a gotcha, however: The alarm simply won't ever sound while the CD is explicitly left on, regardless of the setting of the alarm. It is this paradoxical operation that frequently catches me unawares.

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It is simple to disarm the alarm: Simply press the "Alarm" button once, and the clock symbol disappears from the display. However, to arm it, I must press the "Alarm" button exactly five times. The first time I press it, the display shows me the time of the alarm. On press two, it shows the time when it will turn the sound off. On press three, it shows me whether it will play the radio or the CD. On press four, it shows me the preset volume. On press five, it returns to the normal view, but with the alarm now armed. But with just one additional press, it disarms the alarm. Sleepy, in a dark bedroom, I find it difficult to perform this little digital ballet correctly.

Being a nerdy gizmologist, I continue to fiddle with the device in the hope that I will master it. My wife, however, long ago gave up on the diabolical machine. She loves the look of the sleek, modern design and the fidelity of the sound it produces, but it failed to pass the alarm-clock test weeks ago because it is simply too hard to make work. The alarm clock may still wake me up, but it behaves like a computer.

By contrast, my old $11 noncomputerized alarm clock woke me up with a sudden, unholy buzzing. When it was armed, a single red light glowed. When it was not armed, the red light was dark. I didn't like this old alarm clock for many reasons, but at least I could tell when it was going to wake me up.

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Because it is far cheaper for manufacturers to use computers to control the internal functioning of devices than it is to use older, mechanical methods, it is economically inevitable that computers will insinuate themselves into every product and service in our lives. This means all of our products will soon behave the same as most obnoxious computers, unless we try something different.

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This phenomenon is not restricted to consumer products. Just about every computerized device or service has more features and options than its manual counterpart. Yet, in practice, we often wield the manual devices with more flexibility, subtlety, and awareness than we do the modern versions driven by silicon-chip technology.

High-tech companies in an effort to improve their products are merely adding complicating and unwanted features to them. Because the broken process cannot solve the problem of bad products, but can only add new functions, that is what vendors do. Later in this book I'll show how a better development process makes users happier without the extra work of adding unwanted features.



Inmates Are Running the Asylum, The. Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy &How to Restore the Sanity - 2004 publication
ISBN: B0036HJY9M
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 170

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