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> People tend to place all of that blame on top-level management or developers within a company. They do deserve the blame - but not all of it. Designers cause

> People tend to place all of that blame on top-level management or developers within a company. They do deserve the blame - but not all of it. Designers cause a lot of these issues all on their own and it's easy to understand why. Not to get defensive — I am a designer — but there are two things missing from the conversation when you lay blame at the feet of designers. First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition. If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells. Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells. The author is totally right that companies often ship software that’s too complex, or solves too many problems and does so poorly. This is mostly because the design/engineering team (a) takes directions from Corporate rather than from users, (b) Corporate wants more features so the product stacks up vs. the competition.

jrochkind1 4y ago
Makes sense. I think the OP is not unsympathetic, although not as familiar with what it's like to be a designer. > The only advice I can give to designers is this: try not to add to the problem. I'm not asking you to move mountains, but maybe consider working somewhere else if your career exists solely to add more bloat to the world. (Easier said than done, I know). Or keep doing what you're doing. What do I know - I'm just some guy who rambles on the web. Designers in graphic and physical design, with regard to over-complexity and physical waste, which the OP was talking about with the coffee maker -- have been talking about this, and about what the designer's ethical responsibility is in an environment where the business constraints/pressures may be to create things that don't make things better for people... for 50 years now. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-ken-garlands-first-things-first-manifesto-keeps-getting-updated/ https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-ken-garlands-first-things-f...
blfr 4y ago
Yes, basically the only way to sell the one-purpose, well-made solution is to target customers/clients who already got burned with the more popular option. Which means that you confine your product to a small or professional niche.
- taylodl 4y ago
  That's where the product lines Professional, Commercial and Industrial come from! Oftentimes you'll notice these items have fewer features but a higher build quality.
  - sonofhans 4y ago
    Yes, exactly, that's what I do as much as possible. I have a commercial microwave with literally one control, and a handle; it doesn't even have buttons. I expect it to outlive me, given that I put it through 1/1000 the duty cycle of the commercial kitchen for which it's designed.
csydas 4y ago
I'm very sympathetic to designs at the beck and call of someone else making the decision on features, but I'm not sure that some of the points above are the right way to frame it. > you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. I don't think this is accurate for a substantial part of the population. A novel-length feature list is a guaranteed way to ensure that no one really understands what your product does. A product I worked on had the usual hundreds of features and novel-length user guide, and probably one of the most common questions our support team would ingest was "can product X do thing Y?" which was even just a quick online search away. Featureful updates I think look better for the people investing in the product, not the ones selling/buying it. It justifies expenditures, can be correlated to growth/progress, etc. For specialized products, e.g., coffee makers, I have personal doubts that a substantial amount of buyers care much more than reading a few reviews to confirm that the product "makes good coffee" or " is easy to clean". > Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells. This one I agree with mostly, except for the "build what sells" part. What sells is what the company effectively SEO spams and price-points well within the market. Let's not forget Juicero's history and how well it sold until someone did the groundbreaking journalism of actually using the device and showing how ridiculous it was. I think it helps support the idea that enough moxy/aggressive marketing, you can get just about anything to fly for awhile to turn a profit. And Juicero is just one example of many such things; I doubt that the executive guidance on Juicero was anything more than "Make it squish these bags, read our juice DRM, and set up a subscription service to buy more juice bags." The answer to this is pretty complex I guess, as voting with our wallets is historically pretty ineffective at enacting change. There are a lot of tricks that can be used to make hot garbage a top seller; Amazon is raking in billions doing just this and has been for years, despite constant outrage articles and proof of the garbage-ness of the services. At a certain point, change does need to come from within the company rather than external pressures; the market gets fooled really easily by fancy enough presentations and rich enough people talking about a failed product for 30 seconds. I think that's why the author made the call-out; I read it as fairly tongue in cheek, but it has an element of truth that the pushback likely needs to come internally; I think the author though, and many people, realize this is not as simple of a situation as that though for the points you mentioned about executive decisions. I don't think designers should completely abandon their agency though on products; saving money is pretty persuasive to the decision makers, and probably _that_ is the best way to influence products via a wallet. Just it's the company's wallet, not the consumers.
safety1st 4y ago
More often than not in my experience feature creep originates from marketing/sales. It's their job to sell more units, if that doesn't happen they get a bad review. Frankly, "Make product X do more stuff" is a legitimate way for them to accomplish their goals. But I tend to think if your primary market is sufficiently large, it's better to go deep on solving a specific problem better than anyone else. That said it sure seems like a lot (most?) of the biggest successes in software, from Windows and Office to WeChat, bundle in everything but the kitchen sink.
- gretch 4y ago
  A big part of product and marketing is “differentiation”. You have to give the customer a reason to select your product over N other possibilities in the market. If your functions are a subset of everyone else, and your only benefit is “it works better”, it’s a tough sell. And in a lot of cases people don’t care - eg if your appliance product lasts 5 years compared to 3 years, but studies show on average consumers will upgrade every 2 years (maybe they receive one as a gift), then you don’t stand out at all. It’s just basic product/marketing that if you can say “hey ours has a timer and no one else does” you can draw a lot of customers. It’s your foot in the door, but you should also strive to compete in the fundamentals
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jrwoodruff 4y ago
I actually laughed out loud when I clicked the link and it was Keurig. K-cups rank right up there with Dyson imho. Yea, it kind of solves a problem, but mostly it's great marketing. They created a problem people didn't realize they had, drove demand for a solution no one asked for, and charge a premium so you can create more waste per cup. But, it's cheaper then stopping at Starbucks...
- selectodude 4y ago
  My Dyson vacuum cleaner has been exceptionally good for like a decade now. Keurigs make horrendous coffee and create orders of magnitude more waste. I'm not sure how they're the same.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    Dyson takes the cheapest panasonic parts that exists, puts a fancy case around it, and sells it for massive margins. Here's a detailed teardown of a dyson vacuum: https://youtu.be/NPTzNJMd19A https://youtu.be/NPTzNJMd19A Try a Miele next time, that's a genuine high quality vacuum cleaner that will last you a lifetime.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Out of curiosity, how are any of these consumer-grade vacuums better than an entry-level shop vac you can get for 30 bucks?
    - criddell 4y ago
      I have a Miele C4 and there’s no way it’s going to last a lifetime. The mechanicals may be metal but everything else is made of plastic that seems to be getting more brittle as time passes. Mine has cracks and has broken in a couple of places and so far I’ve been able to glue it, but I should probably replace the case. Miele doesn’t seem to carry these parts for mine anymore so looking for used parts on eBay is probably my only solution. Rather than take a chance buying somebody else’s cracked case, I’m probably going to replace it. When I do, I’m going to spend less money next time understanding that I’ll have to replace it after 5-10 years.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition. Is this true for all appliances? The toaster and the refrigerator seem functionally complete to me. More features = more problems = I don't want them for my toaster.
- mrmattyboy 4y ago
  > ... the refrigerator seem functionally complete to me. And yet fridges are the first product in the kitchen to receive a 24-inch monitor from Samsung :P :P
- klyrs 4y ago
  Want some DRM with that? https://www.ifixit.com/News/41709/welcome-to-drm-water-ges-incredibly-dumb-money-grab https://www.ifixit.com/News/41709/welcome-to-drm-water-ges-i... All I could find for toasters was short fiction... for now
trgn 4y ago
> Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells. This is the defeatist attitude that largely explains why we're stuck in this race to the bottom. A lot of the mass produced stuff we surround and find ourselves surrounded with has gotten worse. This is not because people want worse things. It is because of hidden and opaque incentive structures that are completely misdirected. By leaving it to the market with such a pithy attitude, we divest collective responsibility and instead assign it to some mystical process. Coffee makers are the least of it. Our material surroundings absolutely suck. Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest society ever on this planet is basically made real in plastic, disposable, malfunctioning shit. For my own sanity, I have to reject that this state of affairs is the expression of our collective wishes through the workings of the market.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  Lots of people genuinely do prefer the cheaper (and thus lower quality) product. There isn’t always such a trade off, and there are other reasons to buys things. But low price is commonly a dominant factor.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    No, Americans have seen their real take home pay stagnate for fifty years while the major costs of being alive have significantly increased, and thus are stuck using the same pile of money to attempt to pay for and obtain necessary and desirable things for less than they would have previously. They don't prefer cheaper, they can't afford not cheaper "They don't make it like they used to" is like a society wide exclamation that you can't buy high quality stuff anymore because nobody can afford to buy high quality stuff so nobody can afford to make high quality stuff. This lower basket of income also means americans can't afford to pay the going rates for labor to fix their stuff, meaning something being repairable isn't useful or beneficial in any way, so everything becomes disposable. Small towns used to have niche repair businesses, but who can afford to spend $100 on getting a boot repaired, especially when a new boot is $80 at walmart. So now the cobbler has to shutter his business and he can't afford good stuff anymore either, so now if you DO buy the expensive boots and need them repaired to make them worth their price, you have to seek out a much more expensive specialist or do it yourself which most people cannot do. Money was basically shipped out of local economies into giant megacorps. A lot of stuff isn't even significantly less repairable then it used to be. Flatscreen TVs are super reliable now that they are solid state, with the one exception of the AC power circuitry. Anyone with $20 and a multimeter and youtube and a little confidence can watch tutorials to debug and fix a blown cap on the power supply, but nobody could really run a business on charging $100 to repair $200 flat panel TVs because people can't afford that. Meanwhile "Electronics repair" used to be a common small town business.
sophacles 4y ago
> First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features Well no. I bought it because I didn't have a choice. (Literal coffee makers are actually an exception here). I bought the featurefull version because i wanted a specific feature and my options were basic with 7 features I don't need, pro with 19 features I don't need and ultra with 200 features i don't need and the 1 i do need. Or maybe some obscure other brand has exactly what i need but discovering it is impossible because all 10^9 drop shippers sell only the basic and pro model above, and the rest of the brands are just white label rebrands of the above with slightly different plastic molding and some of the features disabled.
gffrd 4y ago
It does take two to tango, but this response is frustrating to me because it illustrates the lack of ethics/expectations in the design profession/community. (I am also a designer) Companies create the problems the features purport to solve, not the market. Yadda yadda faster horse quote, but it's true: people don't ask for (or need) much … so where does the divergence come from? To designers: Why do we allow such rubbish to be created? We know we can't put up too much fuss or we'll be worked around or replaced … by another designer who will willingly turn the crank for the biscuit. How do we not have more to push back with?
Adverblessly 4y ago
> Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Sure, how do I cast my vote for a non-smart TV? Where do I go to watch my shows via DRM free downloads? How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years? Beyond that, how do I even compare products and find what I want to "vote" for when everything is named something like Sony XP-3000-ZXS Pro that is exactly like the XP-300ZXS Pro+ except one has a water-proof coating and the other comes with patented GB-Free technology (you guess which is which). And to make it harder to compare, the models are subtly different between countries (Oh, you are in Israel? You only get the XP-300ZXS-B Pro+ which is different from the regular Pro+ but we won't tell you how, better look for some local reviews to be sure). It is obvious that most companies go out of their way to frustrate the customer's attempts to "vote with their wallet". It must be cheaper to just drill a brand name into their heads via ad spending then to actually produce a good product (definitely more scalable if you already have the money to spend on ads...). ... Apologies, rant over.
- wrs 4y ago
  There are plenty of non-smart TVs, at least, and plenty of HN threads telling you where to look (they are sold as commercial displays and digital signage). You will really have to vote with your wallet, though, because the smart TVs come with hundreds of dollars of price discount based on bundling of streaming service clients and their ability to send consumer tracking data.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Not always - Sony Bravia conference room displays seem to be rebranded consumer models with clean firmware and the price is affordable. Maybe a small markup but nowhere near what you get on a digital signage display (and also it retains all the advantages of a consumer-grade TV such as speakers, remote, etc).
  - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
    I spent months on this recently. Commercial displays are rarely available in retail quantities (e.g 1) in my country, and the few that are lack basics such as multiple HDMI ports, HDR, etc. The options may be greater for you, but they're limited for most of us.
AussieWog93 4y ago
>First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition. I'm in retail (e-commerce, selling retro video games), and this is 100% my experience. There is a certain type of customer who is prepared to pay extra for quality and durability, but they are swamped by the overwhelming majority of the market who try to optimise for features and price. It's reached the stage now where we no longer even bother bundling official accessories with many consoles we sell, as the overwhelming majority of people will not just prefer but pay extra to get bigger bundles containing multiple third-party controllers, ludicrously large Alibaba memory cards and "free" copies of FIFA/Assassin's Creed (which are otherwise so low-value we actually gut them to re-use the case). The same market will also pay an extra $40 or so to get a 1TB HDD installed in their PS3s, even though the average person probably only uses 10-20GB (it reached the point where we always upgrade anything smaller than 500GB as it doesn't make economic sense to do otherwise). It really is understated how badly people want features, even ones they'll never use or get in the way of their enjoyment of the product.
- benj111 4y ago
  There's a few things going on here though. If you're buying a PS3 bundle you probably don't already own a PS3. So you probably don't know what storage you will actually need. The games may be worthless to you, but if you wanted to actually buy it, it's going to cost something even if it's to cover the postage. 3rd party controllers. If you know they're going to be used regularly then 1st party is the way to go, but a second controller for me has always been a little used just in case thing. And this is all assuming it isn't a parent buying it for child, that has no idea what they're after, and a buying a bundle so they know it will all work together. I think you're also underestimating the value add. If I buy an AliExpress memory card, I have to work out if it's going to work as advertised etc, if it doesn't I then have the pain of getting my money back and waiting for a replacement. If I buy from you as part of a bigger purchase I have an expectation that you've found a card that works, and presumably don't want to torpedo a $100+ sale over a $2 memory card. If I were to buy a PS3 now, I would need at least a subset of these things, I would have to work out compatibility, wait for everything to arrive, and if it doesn't all work, I have to work out what the issue is an sort a replacement. All in all, if you sell me all the elements, if it doesn't work, I get some come back, even that copy of assassin's creed. I may never play it, but if it doesn't work, it stops me being in a situation where game seller says the games are ok, you need to clean the optical drive, and the console seller saying the games are scratched.
janalsncm 4y ago
> Vote with your feet The problem with this is that it is an ambiguous signal. If a product is best on 3/4 features that I care about, buying it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about that fourth feature. Likewise, not buying it would suggest that I don’t care about those other three features, which isn’t the case. Voting with your feet only makes sense when there is one feature you care about. For example for insurance with a minimum amount of coverage, the only factor I care about is price.
jjav 4y ago
> If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells. But what sells is only that which is for sale. How do I vote with my wallet for products that companies refuse to build? In nearly every market category, I want products which are extremely simple, easy to maintain, difficult to break (due to simplicity) and built to the highest possible standard of craftsmanship. Turns out that in nearly every market category, such products don't exist.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Makes sense. I think the OP is not unsympathetic, although not as familiar with what it's like to be a designer. > The only advice I can give to designers is this: try not to add to the problem. I'm not asking you to move mountains, but maybe consider working somewhere else if your career exists solely to add more bloat to the world. (Easier said than done, I know). Or keep doing what you're doing. What do I know - I'm just some guy who rambles on the web. Designers in graphic and physical design, with regard to over-complexity and physical waste, which the OP was talking about with the coffee maker -- have been talking about this, and about what the designer's ethical responsibility is in an environment where the business constraints/pressures may be to create things that don't make things better for people... for 50 years now. https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-ken-garlands-first-things-first-manifesto-keeps-getting-updated/ https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-ken-garlands-first-things-f...

blfr 4y ago

Yes, basically the only way to sell the one-purpose, well-made solution is to target customers/clients who already got burned with the more popular option. Which means that you confine your product to a small or professional niche.

taylodl 4y ago
That's where the product lines Professional, Commercial and Industrial come from! Oftentimes you'll notice these items have fewer features but a higher build quality.
- sonofhans 4y ago
  Yes, exactly, that's what I do as much as possible. I have a commercial microwave with literally one control, and a handle; it doesn't even have buttons. I expect it to outlive me, given that I put it through 1/1000 the duty cycle of the commercial kitchen for which it's designed.

csydas 4y ago

I'm very sympathetic to designs at the beck and call of someone else making the decision on features, but I'm not sure that some of the points above are the right way to frame it. > you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. I don't think this is accurate for a substantial part of the population. A novel-length feature list is a guaranteed way to ensure that no one really understands what your product does. A product I worked on had the usual hundreds of features and novel-length user guide, and probably one of the most common questions our support team would ingest was "can product X do thing Y?" which was even just a quick online search away. Featureful updates I think look better for the people investing in the product, not the ones selling/buying it. It justifies expenditures, can be correlated to growth/progress, etc. For specialized products, e.g., coffee makers, I have personal doubts that a substantial amount of buyers care much more than reading a few reviews to confirm that the product "makes good coffee" or " is easy to clean". > Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells. This one I agree with mostly, except for the "build what sells" part. What sells is what the company effectively SEO spams and price-points well within the market. Let's not forget Juicero's history and how well it sold until someone did the groundbreaking journalism of actually using the device and showing how ridiculous it was. I think it helps support the idea that enough moxy/aggressive marketing, you can get just about anything to fly for awhile to turn a profit. And Juicero is just one example of many such things; I doubt that the executive guidance on Juicero was anything more than "Make it squish these bags, read our juice DRM, and set up a subscription service to buy more juice bags." The answer to this is pretty complex I guess, as voting with our wallets is historically pretty ineffective at enacting change. There are a lot of tricks that can be used to make hot garbage a top seller; Amazon is raking in billions doing just this and has been for years, despite constant outrage articles and proof of the garbage-ness of the services. At a certain point, change does need to come from within the company rather than external pressures; the market gets fooled really easily by fancy enough presentations and rich enough people talking about a failed product for 30 seconds. I think that's why the author made the call-out; I read it as fairly tongue in cheek, but it has an element of truth that the pushback likely needs to come internally; I think the author though, and many people, realize this is not as simple of a situation as that though for the points you mentioned about executive decisions. I don't think designers should completely abandon their agency though on products; saving money is pretty persuasive to the decision makers, and probably _that_ is the best way to influence products via a wallet. Just it's the company's wallet, not the consumers.

safety1st 4y ago

More often than not in my experience feature creep originates from marketing/sales. It's their job to sell more units, if that doesn't happen they get a bad review. Frankly, "Make product X do more stuff" is a legitimate way for them to accomplish their goals. But I tend to think if your primary market is sufficiently large, it's better to go deep on solving a specific problem better than anyone else. That said it sure seems like a lot (most?) of the biggest successes in software, from Windows and Office to WeChat, bundle in everything but the kitchen sink.

gretch 4y ago
A big part of product and marketing is “differentiation”. You have to give the customer a reason to select your product over N other possibilities in the market. If your functions are a subset of everyone else, and your only benefit is “it works better”, it’s a tough sell. And in a lot of cases people don’t care - eg if your appliance product lasts 5 years compared to 3 years, but studies show on average consumers will upgrade every 2 years (maybe they receive one as a gift), then you don’t stand out at all. It’s just basic product/marketing that if you can say “hey ours has a timer and no one else does” you can draw a lot of customers. It’s your foot in the door, but you should also strive to compete in the fundamentals

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jrwoodruff 4y ago

I actually laughed out loud when I clicked the link and it was Keurig. K-cups rank right up there with Dyson imho. Yea, it kind of solves a problem, but mostly it's great marketing. They created a problem people didn't realize they had, drove demand for a solution no one asked for, and charge a premium so you can create more waste per cup. But, it's cheaper then stopping at Starbucks...

selectodude 4y ago
My Dyson vacuum cleaner has been exceptionally good for like a decade now. Keurigs make horrendous coffee and create orders of magnitude more waste. I'm not sure how they're the same.
- kuschku 4y ago
  Dyson takes the cheapest panasonic parts that exists, puts a fancy case around it, and sells it for massive margins. Here's a detailed teardown of a dyson vacuum: https://youtu.be/NPTzNJMd19A https://youtu.be/NPTzNJMd19A Try a Miele next time, that's a genuine high quality vacuum cleaner that will last you a lifetime.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, how are any of these consumer-grade vacuums better than an entry-level shop vac you can get for 30 bucks?
  - criddell 4y ago
    I have a Miele C4 and there’s no way it’s going to last a lifetime. The mechanicals may be metal but everything else is made of plastic that seems to be getting more brittle as time passes. Mine has cracks and has broken in a couple of places and so far I’ve been able to glue it, but I should probably replace the case. Miele doesn’t seem to carry these parts for mine anymore so looking for used parts on eBay is probably my only solution. Rather than take a chance buying somebody else’s cracked case, I’m probably going to replace it. When I do, I’m going to spend less money next time understanding that I’ll have to replace it after 5-10 years.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

mrmattyboy 4y ago
> ... the refrigerator seem functionally complete to me. And yet fridges are the first product in the kitchen to receive a 24-inch monitor from Samsung :P :P
klyrs 4y ago
Want some DRM with that? https://www.ifixit.com/News/41709/welcome-to-drm-water-ges-incredibly-dumb-money-grab https://www.ifixit.com/News/41709/welcome-to-drm-water-ges-i... All I could find for toasters was short fiction... for now

trgn 4y ago

> Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells. This is the defeatist attitude that largely explains why we're stuck in this race to the bottom. A lot of the mass produced stuff we surround and find ourselves surrounded with has gotten worse. This is not because people want worse things. It is because of hidden and opaque incentive structures that are completely misdirected. By leaving it to the market with such a pithy attitude, we divest collective responsibility and instead assign it to some mystical process. Coffee makers are the least of it. Our material surroundings absolutely suck. Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest society ever on this planet is basically made real in plastic, disposable, malfunctioning shit. For my own sanity, I have to reject that this state of affairs is the expression of our collective wishes through the workings of the market.

jacobr1 4y ago
Lots of people genuinely do prefer the cheaper (and thus lower quality) product. There isn’t always such a trade off, and there are other reasons to buys things. But low price is commonly a dominant factor.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  No, Americans have seen their real take home pay stagnate for fifty years while the major costs of being alive have significantly increased, and thus are stuck using the same pile of money to attempt to pay for and obtain necessary and desirable things for less than they would have previously. They don't prefer cheaper, they can't afford not cheaper "They don't make it like they used to" is like a society wide exclamation that you can't buy high quality stuff anymore because nobody can afford to buy high quality stuff so nobody can afford to make high quality stuff. This lower basket of income also means americans can't afford to pay the going rates for labor to fix their stuff, meaning something being repairable isn't useful or beneficial in any way, so everything becomes disposable. Small towns used to have niche repair businesses, but who can afford to spend $100 on getting a boot repaired, especially when a new boot is $80 at walmart. So now the cobbler has to shutter his business and he can't afford good stuff anymore either, so now if you DO buy the expensive boots and need them repaired to make them worth their price, you have to seek out a much more expensive specialist or do it yourself which most people cannot do. Money was basically shipped out of local economies into giant megacorps. A lot of stuff isn't even significantly less repairable then it used to be. Flatscreen TVs are super reliable now that they are solid state, with the one exception of the AC power circuitry. Anyone with $20 and a multimeter and youtube and a little confidence can watch tutorials to debug and fix a blown cap on the power supply, but nobody could really run a business on charging $100 to repair $200 flat panel TVs because people can't afford that. Meanwhile "Electronics repair" used to be a common small town business.

sophacles 4y ago

> First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features Well no. I bought it because I didn't have a choice. (Literal coffee makers are actually an exception here). I bought the featurefull version because i wanted a specific feature and my options were basic with 7 features I don't need, pro with 19 features I don't need and ultra with 200 features i don't need and the 1 i do need. Or maybe some obscure other brand has exactly what i need but discovering it is impossible because all 10^9 drop shippers sell only the basic and pro model above, and the rest of the brands are just white label rebrands of the above with slightly different plastic molding and some of the features disabled.

gffrd 4y ago

It does take two to tango, but this response is frustrating to me because it illustrates the lack of ethics/expectations in the design profession/community. (I am also a designer) Companies create the problems the features purport to solve, not the market. Yadda yadda faster horse quote, but it's true: people don't ask for (or need) much … so where does the divergence come from? To designers: Why do we allow such rubbish to be created? We know we can't put up too much fuss or we'll be worked around or replaced … by another designer who will willingly turn the crank for the biscuit. How do we not have more to push back with?

Adverblessly 4y ago

> Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Sure, how do I cast my vote for a non-smart TV? Where do I go to watch my shows via DRM free downloads? How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years? Beyond that, how do I even compare products and find what I want to "vote" for when everything is named something like Sony XP-3000-ZXS Pro that is exactly like the XP-300ZXS Pro+ except one has a water-proof coating and the other comes with patented GB-Free technology (you guess which is which). And to make it harder to compare, the models are subtly different between countries (Oh, you are in Israel? You only get the XP-300ZXS-B Pro+ which is different from the regular Pro+ but we won't tell you how, better look for some local reviews to be sure). It is obvious that most companies go out of their way to frustrate the customer's attempts to "vote with their wallet". It must be cheaper to just drill a brand name into their heads via ad spending then to actually produce a good product (definitely more scalable if you already have the money to spend on ads...). ... Apologies, rant over.

wrs 4y ago
There are plenty of non-smart TVs, at least, and plenty of HN threads telling you where to look (they are sold as commercial displays and digital signage). You will really have to vote with your wallet, though, because the smart TVs come with hundreds of dollars of price discount based on bundling of streaming service clients and their ability to send consumer tracking data.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Not always - Sony Bravia conference room displays seem to be rebranded consumer models with clean firmware and the price is affordable. Maybe a small markup but nowhere near what you get on a digital signage display (and also it retains all the advantages of a consumer-grade TV such as speakers, remote, etc).
- TheHappyOddish 4y ago
  I spent months on this recently. Commercial displays are rarely available in retail quantities (e.g 1) in my country, and the few that are lack basics such as multiple HDMI ports, HDR, etc. The options may be greater for you, but they're limited for most of us.

AussieWog93 4y ago

>First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition. I'm in retail (e-commerce, selling retro video games), and this is 100% my experience. There is a certain type of customer who is prepared to pay extra for quality and durability, but they are swamped by the overwhelming majority of the market who try to optimise for features and price. It's reached the stage now where we no longer even bother bundling official accessories with many consoles we sell, as the overwhelming majority of people will not just prefer but pay extra to get bigger bundles containing multiple third-party controllers, ludicrously large Alibaba memory cards and "free" copies of FIFA/Assassin's Creed (which are otherwise so low-value we actually gut them to re-use the case). The same market will also pay an extra $40 or so to get a 1TB HDD installed in their PS3s, even though the average person probably only uses 10-20GB (it reached the point where we always upgrade anything smaller than 500GB as it doesn't make economic sense to do otherwise). It really is understated how badly people want features, even ones they'll never use or get in the way of their enjoyment of the product.

benj111 4y ago
There's a few things going on here though. If you're buying a PS3 bundle you probably don't already own a PS3. So you probably don't know what storage you will actually need. The games may be worthless to you, but if you wanted to actually buy it, it's going to cost something even if it's to cover the postage. 3rd party controllers. If you know they're going to be used regularly then 1st party is the way to go, but a second controller for me has always been a little used just in case thing. And this is all assuming it isn't a parent buying it for child, that has no idea what they're after, and a buying a bundle so they know it will all work together. I think you're also underestimating the value add. If I buy an AliExpress memory card, I have to work out if it's going to work as advertised etc, if it doesn't I then have the pain of getting my money back and waiting for a replacement. If I buy from you as part of a bigger purchase I have an expectation that you've found a card that works, and presumably don't want to torpedo a $100+ sale over a $2 memory card. If I were to buy a PS3 now, I would need at least a subset of these things, I would have to work out compatibility, wait for everything to arrive, and if it doesn't all work, I have to work out what the issue is an sort a replacement. All in all, if you sell me all the elements, if it doesn't work, I get some come back, even that copy of assassin's creed. I may never play it, but if it doesn't work, it stops me being in a situation where game seller says the games are ok, you need to clean the optical drive, and the console seller saying the games are scratched.

janalsncm 4y ago

> Vote with your feet The problem with this is that it is an ambiguous signal. If a product is best on 3/4 features that I care about, buying it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about that fourth feature. Likewise, not buying it would suggest that I don’t care about those other three features, which isn’t the case. Voting with your feet only makes sense when there is one feature you care about. For example for insurance with a minimum amount of coverage, the only factor I care about is price.

jjav 4y ago

> If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells. But what sells is only that which is for sale. How do I vote with my wallet for products that companies refuse to build? In nearly every market category, I want products which are extremely simple, easy to maintain, difficult to break (due to simplicity) and built to the highest possible standard of craftsmanship. Turns out that in nearly every market category, such products don't exist.