Can’t make it work?
p2p news / p2pnet: If consumers can’t work out how to operate a new device within about 20 minutes, the product goes back.
So says Dutch scientist Elke den Ouden, a PhD candidate at the Technical University of Eindhoven.
Complaints and returns of hardware such as mp3 music players and wireless audio systems were supposedly down to defective design, she says in her thesis, according to Reuters.
But in fact, half of all products returned to stores by consumers are failures because the buyer couldn’t figure out how to operate the device, den Ouden said.
She also used product managers at Philips, the Netherlands-based electronics giant, as guinea pigs, giving them new products to test over a weekend, says the story, adding:
“Even the managers returned with complaints about not being able to puzzle out the hardware.”
Den Ouden is slated to defend, ‘Developments of a Design Analysis Model for Consumer Complaints: Revealing a New Class Of Quality Failures,’ on March 16.
Also See:
Reuters – Scientist: Complexity causes 50% of product returns, March 6, 2006
March 7th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
That is what happens when engineers are allowed to design a product and write the documentation with little or no beta testing by non tech people.
March 7th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
What about products that are advertised as plug & play, yet require firmware upgrades, or at least intermediate technical proficiency to get functioning properly? There are a LOT of products (Consumer grade wireless routers come to mind) that are sold as a “plug-it-in-and-it-works” appliance, yet most definitely are NOT.
You don’t expect to have to change the timer on a new clothes washer; why should you have to apply fixes to the router to make it work?