When working on any item, albeit a car, office equipment or household item etc, how is it some items that do exactly the same job can be are so very easy or very difficult to service/repair. In my opinion it is just poor design, it maybe of course to ensure you have to take it to main dealer with special tools, but this can't be the case when changing, for example, a printer ink cartridge etc, but I still believe it's just rubbish design. What's really infuriates me is when I'm sitting in my garage late at night skinning my knuckles on a task unnecessarily complicated and needs three hands to thinking that the useless designer is probably relaxing in is home with a glass of wine. In my opinion all designers should be made to fit/service any item they design maybe them they would design better it better.

Oh. Maybe all complainers should come to a DO and have to listen to all the screeching/shrieking/grumbling that comes in from every angle from Manufcturing, Servicing, purchasing, Accounts, styling, project planning and every other department who all want different things and have no understanding that the world doesn't revolve around them?

Every design is a compromise, if everything was designed so people could fix it easily it would be huge, ugly, costly and un-sellable.

I am a designer. In fact I run a team of them.


As above design is always a compromise. People who just see one part of the item rarely understand why something is the way it is. Lets say a designer designs a bracket to hold a alternator on a engine, the perfect bracket. This could happen

1. Budget forces the designer to lower the spec of material. It then rusts faster.

2. It needs to be alteredd to fit mulmultiple engines. So has brackets and holes for seemingly no reason to a single user.

3. Design is altered again to encorperate a belt tensioner mount.

4. Design change to fit multiple alternators.

5. Belt tensioner positioned elsewhere but tooling for our bracket has already been done. Mounting holes just stay even though they are useless.

Now our bracket looks nothing like the perfect bracket we originally designed . Leading to endless skinned knuckles by people down the line. Designer becomes depressed and disillusioned because every thing he does is bastardised by someone between him and the end user. Designer gets blamed for All shortcomings.


Does that answer your question?

[Edited on 3/7/16 by Irony]

In my design team and company as a whole we have a high priority on usability. It is amongst the highest concerns with cost, delivery to market and obvious functionality / feature requirements.

Service ( maintaining and simple repairing) i a tough one. We try to consider the frequency of operation being carried out as well as the level of training provided to the operator.

To put it simpler, I would make sure that changing ink cartridges is easy because its an expected service requirement carried out by an unskilled operator. Changing brakes on a car is an expectez service requirement by a skilled operator. Replacing a clutch is not expected, but if required, will be carried out by a skilled operator.

When you find out half the car needs to taken off and uber bendy hands required to change a slide light bulb, the designers had to comprimise for some reason.

I fully understand that you are under pressure with regards to cost and multi design useage etc. However, it does not explain how some well designed products are easy to use/maintain and others that do exactly the same job are very difficult. It would appear that from the replies that all designs a compromise, however, you must surely agree that there are products on the market that are badly designed.

[Edited on 3/7/16 by LBMEFM]

Of course there are products that are badly designed and not fit for purpose. And there are of course poor designers of said products out there. But it's not always the fault of your 'wine drinking designer'.

I always wonder about products that seem poorly designed and unfit for purpose because a designer never works alone. How did the poor design get past the manufacturing stage and still be awful? Didn't someone along the chain raise a query to why the product is awful.

One example of the above is a brand new coach I went on with the most crazy terrible seat covers ever. They were black with zigzag yellow and green stripes slashed haphazardly across. They were truly terrible, vomit inducing. Ghastly to look at. In my mind there was a group of people around a table with swatches deciding on what material to use. 'yes this is the one we want'

[Edited on 4/7/16 by Irony]