I’ve complained previously about the idiotic positioning of the radio antenna on my car, which has nearly cost me an eye a couple of times, when I needed to hack ice off the windshield. Today brought up another example of really small design flaws that make a big difference.
Last night’s storm dropped about a foot of powdery snow all over everything (in fact, it’s still snowing a little bit). This is mostly pretty easy to deal with, except for the end of the driveway where the plows compact it into much denser material. So I went to the shed, and dragged out the snow blower.
Said snow blower has a handy set of starting instructions printed on it, telling you what to do in what order. One of the steps is “set the choke lever to the on position.” The choke lever, however, has no labels on it. Well, that’s not entirely true– there are some cryptic symbols embossed in the plastic housing, in oh-so-visible black on black. But none of them are obviously an “on” position.
It would be really simple to have the instructions say “set the choke lever all the way to the left,” in which case, I probably would’ve been able to get the damn thing started. As it was, I tried a few times on each of the extreme settings, then gave up and used a shovel. Our next-door neighbor was kind enough to clear the end with his snow blower.
Small things make a huge difference in the usability of complicated devices.
It’s almost impossible to document some well, that you’ve designed, especially when you are surrounded by people who have designed similar things.
That’s still no excuse– hire someone who is good at it, and does only that.
In my experience, manual start snow blowers are almost impossible to start unless the outdoor temperature is above 40 degrees. The colder it is, the less likely they are to start. Of course, once you get smart to this and buy an electric start snowblower, you won’t have any significant snow until the battery has died.
Now that my eyes are getting older, I really hate the black-on-black, silver-on-silver, or same-on-same type that manufacturers use on stuff.
I think the obverse of ‘complicated’ is ‘common sense’, and both of them are concepts that hide big parts of the problem. Nothing that people call ‘common sense’ or ‘complicated’ really is once you take examine it sufficiently, and the terms are used to paint people negatively.
That said, you should practice using your tools before you need to use them, and label them in ways that makes sense to you. You are going to spend far more time looking at that black-on-black choke label than anyone in the factory that built it ever did, so you might as well customize it to fit your life. Or you could do what I actually do, and mistakenly count on the “common sense” that you should be able remember what you did come next winter.
To be fair, the paper instruction sheet that came with the snow blower did identify which position was the correct one. Where that sheet is, I have no idea, but it did say.
I never remember which direction is the right one, because I only use the thing maybe once a year. I loathe the smell of two-cycle gas exhaust, and there’s no way to use it without getting bathed in the exhaust smoke. Which means whatever I wear when I run it smells like two-cycle exhuast for the next week.
It’s less annoying to just shovel the driveway, most of the time.
Press a dry sponge on flour then lightly on the embossing. There are your instructions. Write them down before it snows. White on white gets lightly strummed with a Sharpie held parallel to the embossing plane and normal to the direction of travel.
Clear snow the way the military does it – (explosives) privates (child labor). The entire First World loses a $trillion/year in productivity to Officially decrease planetary average temp by a full degree centigrade. Like priviledged minorities mercyhumped into jobs they cannot do, three consecutive years of spontaneous planetary lowering temps require a century of lowering temps for validation. You’ll be boiling air to breathe.
A dab of latex paint can be dabbed on the lettering and wiped off leaving the message easy to read. I have found a piece of plastic makes a squeegee that leaves just the right amount in the letters but a rag works also.
I use white paint on black surfaces, black on white and tan and red on silver. Whatever looks right.
Used to be quality companies did it for you but in the ‘price is everything’ world a company can save a nickel by not doing it. I would think that it would lead to law suits, how can you observe warnings and follow directions when you can’t read the message because of poor contrast.
On machinery that gets beat up I have sometimes drilled markings into the sheet metal. One hole at the low setting three in a tight triangular pattern on high.
Drilled through the metal the markings can’t get scratched off or obscured by grease or dirt.
On the Little Things meme: I love my Outback, don’t get me wrong, but the 2000 model has some really screwy little things (since fixed in later models).
Like the screen in front of the speedometer slopes outward from top to bottom instead of inwards. The result is that noonday sun shines through the windscreen onto it and the reflection renders the dials invisible.
Or the upper cup holder, seems cleverly concealed and springs out for use, but turns out at the first bump or sharp right turn that the contents slop out and into the CD slot below it.
And the alarm system is tied to the door locks, so it is impossible to lock the car without arming the alarm. I commute on a ferry. The alarm system correctly deduces that the vehicle is empty and rocking. The resulting noise in the confined spaces of the car deck drives everybody down there mad. And I get paged to “secure my alarm”. It also has a pathological state wherein it will trigger when one is sitting on the driving seat and operates the locks manually. Sometimes. And the only reset is to rapidly cycle the ignition key through full on – full off three times; the wireless button won’t reset it.
Our Windstar has one too – it automatically locks the doors when enough torque is applied through the transmission. I guess this is a car-jacking defense. But I am far more likely to get involved in an accident and need passing Samaritans to be able to open the door to rescue me.
C’mon. I live two towns away from you and me and most of my neighbors are far less ejacated then youse’n and yet we can get our snowblowers started when required. This week’s wintry weather gave you ample opportunity for practice (as it did for me). “On” is whatever positon left or right, up or down, that starts the damn thing. OK, once you’ve got that down, just scratch the paint with a nail, screwdriver or other sharp instrumnent because anxiety will probably provoke memory failure.
Now I started MY snowblower about 68 times in one hour yesterday. The reason: the damn thing kept stalling. Why? Because a small amount of gas was visible low in the tank my diagnosis was skewed and I feared engine failure caused by my neglect of oil changes (that’s another story you won’t be interested in). Nevertheless filling the tank solved the problem. This was not logical to my point of view. But it worked.
Have you tried calling a dealership for your brand of snowblower? That’s probably the simplest route.
Personally, I think that all newcomers to our area should be issued with a snowblower, standby generator and sump pump and be instructed in how to use them. Sort of an upstate orientation session. Would have saved me a whole lot of grief about 30 years ago!
As very large percentage of computer GUIs severely tick me off, usually for one or two (or both) reasons: Some part of the display uses darkly-coloured text on a dark background (or other form of low contrast; this is the digital equivalent of black-on-black); and/or the fecking font size is too small (and for some reason my carefully-set global/default settings weren’t used). Upshot is I literally have to press my nose against the screen to read the too-small hard-to-see text to find the menu/whatever to fiddle with the text (font) size and if possible, the fore-/back-ground settings/theme/whatever to make the tool usable.
And then people say to use the “Help” button and I fecking explode: It I cannot see the “Help” button and/or read the (supposedly-)helpful text, it’s completely fecking useless and so is your ill-considered crap advice. I have totally lost patience with GUI designers who seem totally clewless about the original attraction of GUIs: Use of ease. Far too many thesedays are not for the simplest of reasons, they cannot be seen!