Engineers should be forced to use every single thing they design in a real world setting for at least 6 weeks before a product is put on the market. Take small home appliances, for example.
We got a new coffee maker at work this week, mostly because our old one was not only a POS but also because it was broken enough to warrant replacing. The new coffee maker is nice, even if I haven’t figured out how it only gets 6 cups of brewed coffee out of 12 cups of water (WTF?) but it’s got a couple of flaws.
First off, the power cord is only four feet long. Normally four feet would be enough but not in the kitchen at work where most of the outlets are retrofit. Secondly, the plug itself, the actual physical piece that goes into the socket, sticks out from the outlet about two inches (5.08cm). This thing is freaking huge.
What bugs me is that this appliance’s design assumes you won’t have to put a piece of furniture in front of an outlet, that you’ll have scads and loads of space to devote just to the electrical feeding of this one appliance. I give us maybe a month before we’ve broken one of the prongs off the plug because someone’s run into it and pulled it sideways out of the wall or it’s been banged by the refrigerator door.
Now, why wouldn’t you design every single appliance with flat plug that hugs the wall thereby making easier for real people in less than perfect homes to actually use the damn appliances?
Yes, I know, the company doesn’t care if you buy the product and take it straight to the trashcan without ever opening the box; they just want your money. But it makes me wonder, why do we call it “common” sense, again?