Peter Cochrane: The rise and rise of bad design

When did quality control die?

As a young graduate engineer, I joined industry to discover reassuring sets of standards defining almost every component, sub-system and design practice. Born of decades of experience that had rigorously filtered out what worked well and what didn't, these standards minimised the number of design and build errors, as well as the number of operational failures.

But those were the days of the drawing office when design guides, specification and rigorous testing were the norm. Everything from the choice of materials to the human interface was not only well understood, it was controlled, cross-checked and well defined.

I'm not sure when it became obvious to me all this ‘quality assurance' showed signs of falling apart, but I suspect it was with the arrival of the PC and software facilitated choice. The near total freedom gradually afforded individuals, along with the rapid acceleration of technology, saw a lot of controls and constraints gradually 'emancipated' to become things of the past.

For sure, many physical standards and controls remain in place, but as we approach the user, it all appears increasingly lax and out of control. For exemplars, look no further than the range of computing devices, their physical form, operating systems, applications, icons, fonts, colour choices and styles, not to mention white and brown goods and vehicles. It's not that I live in fear and trepidation of yet another device, operating system, operating system upgrade, but I do resent the time taken to adjust to yet another seemingly unnecessary change of layout with seemingly random function categorisation, menu location and positioning.

I also find it increasingly irritating that icons and text that are so small on all my devices that they cannot be easily decoded whilst on the move or in poor lighting conditions. Is it that designers are getting younger and enjoy 20:20 vision and perfect colour perception, or is it just the spread of ignorance and a lack of education, thought, and guidance?

Just think of the number of conference and company presentations you have suffered where you couldn't read the slides due to some ridiculously small font and/or colour choice. Among my favourites are blue on purple, green on yellow, red on orange, white on a very pale green, and white on yellow, all accompanied by some apologetic comment along the lines - I'm sorry you can't read this slide. I have to say this usually prompts me to feel sorry for the author, obviously lacking the intelligence to check out their slides, and I quickly get back to clearing my email!

I can only presume that the designers never actually try their designs under operational conditions

More recently, this design failure disease has spread to vehicles and domestic goods such as television and hi-fi systems. Even on different models by the same manufacturer, you can find GPS systems spanning the excellent, in terms of clarity and ease of operation, through to the rubbish and even dangerous, with unnecessary complexity, text and icons you can or cannot read or discern, poor colour combinations, and contrast that defies comprehension at a glance.

I can only presume that the designers never actually try their designs under operational conditions, and perhaps even worse, nobody checks their work. There appears to be no quality control and assurance, and no judgement call on what works and what doesn't.

What these companies and designers really don't seem to understand is that you and I will thoroughly test these products, and try everything in real time, and that will influence our purchase choices on the basis of what works for us, as opposed to what is convenient for some disconnected contract designer.

Peter Cochrane OBE is Professor of Sentient Systems at the University of Suffolk