We Aren't Going to Make This Easy, Part II - or - More in the Ongoing Struggle With Bad Design

 

If you are looking for the serial number on the underside of a MacBook Pro, good luck.  The type is very light gray, and the size of an ant's foot.  This info can be called up on the screen, but if you're out of battery this would be the (useless) backup.  However, the box it came in is quite nice, so they got that right.

 There are hundreds of words, symbols and numbers on the back panel of our garage door opener, but the only thing you really need to know is where the "Learn" button is -- you will use it many times when the machine loses its programming from a power loss or several other mysterious reasons.  It is not labelled -- why not?

I rented a Chevrolet Cruze once, not by choice, but it was what they had available at an airport.  Instead of words, every control had only cryptic symbols.  I never did find the lights switch.  Car reviewers have said that even tech-savvy BMW drivers couldn't figure out their early touch screen controls.  Our Bush-era car has very few things anyone can't figure out intuitively.  You can even turn on the heat or cooling without taking your eyes off the road to scroll through menus.

  We had to accept a new "smart" thermostat along with the replacement heat pump.  The lettering is tiny with very low contrast (unlike the much better example above) and of course it has layers of useless functions which, if used, could ball up the system so badly you won't even be able to get the air conditioning going.  All those nighttime and vacation settings don't really do much of anything you couldn't just as easily acccomplish by turning the temperature setting up or down.  With a physical dial, as Nature intended.  

In a lot of homes, the clothes washer and dryer are crammed together in an opening that doesn't allow the dryer to be slid out for cleaning lint from the duct pipe, which must be done.  I used to have to disconnect the washer after removing the louvered doors, wrestle it out and then pull the dryer out part way (there wasn't room for more than that) and go to work, mostly upside down.   An added six inches or so more of opening width on either side would make this task so much more doable. 

That was the only one of these design messes I could fix.  The appliances went down to the basement, which is a better place for all that noise, too.  Makers of cars, thermostats, garage door openers and MacBooks, the rest is up to you.