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August 15, 2005
USA Today doesn't get it
USA Today apparently doesn't understand the difference between "dumbing down" and good design. Check out the title of their story:"Hotels dumb down alarm clocks for weary guests". The story itself is a great example of good versus bad design:
How difficult can setting an alarm clock be? That's a question of much interest in the hotel industry. Responding to guests confused by the numerous unexplained buttons on their alarm clocks, hotel companies are introducing simpler models designed to be more user-friendly.
It's a move that guests like David Cornett, a St. Louis-based human resources executive, could come to embrace. "Some of the clocks are ridiculously complicated, especially when you are at the end of a 16-hour day and don't even check in until 10 p.m.," he says.
. . .
Business travelers, fretting about early morning meetings or flights, have come to view hotel alarm clocks as a key travel tool and a source of anxiety. Often devoid of intuitive designs, LCD-display clocks have flummoxed guests for years with their "hold-button-while-pressing-another" features.
Too many of our tech devices are overloaded with complex features that only get in the way of their ultimate purpose. This swiss-army-knife approach to engineering (aka "everything but the kitchen sink approach) fails to even understand the elegance and simplicity of the design of the Swiss Army knife.
And USA Today's headline writers fail to understand that good design is not "dumbing down."
(Now if I were catty and going after Wonkette's audience, I would say something like "that is because many view USA Today as the dumbed down version of a newspaper." But it is the dog days of summer and I will resist the temptation.)
Posted by Ken Jarboe at August 15, 2005 11:25 AM
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