As I promised, the rough schedule that shows what will occur in each meeting of the Good Products Bad Products course is shown here.
At the first meeting of the class, Dave Beach, Adam Grosser, and I first said a few words about ourselves and our interests in quality. Dave is responsible for the course and Adam is helping him teach it, and the course uses my Good Products, Bad Products book. A short resume for Dave is here, and one for Adam is here. They are old friends and both interested in product quality, but have had very different careers, so they should be a dream team.
After we talked, Dave spent an hour running the students
through an exercise meant to show the difference in sensitivity to quality
between merely talking and reading about products and using them. He used two citrus juicers, one a
traditional electrically powered one, and one the rather unconventional one
designed by Philippe Starck, a very well known designer, shown in the photo
The students discussed the two of them at great length, easily bringing up good and bad points about them. But then he had had volunteers from the class actually squeeze juice with them and comment about their reactions to the process as they did it. As usual, an entirely different and perhaps more insightful set of issues appeared. And the class heavily turned against the Starck model, even though it is unique, an eye catching design, has no breakable moving parts, requires no electricity, and is perhaps the highest selling product in Alessi stores—Beach and I of course love it.
In my brief talk, I offered the following reasons why product quality might not be as high as possible; complacency, short-term profit motivation, tradition, lack of priority in education and in industry, and lazy customers. My book goes into more detail on them, but the last is one of my favorites. Why do we settle for less quality than we should?
We consumers tend to be swayed by increasingly sophisticated advertising and “deals” and do not pay enough attention to the long-term usage of products. Even though I am deeply involved in the issue of product quality, I find myself making decisions with little if any experience in using the product I am thinking of buying. I too make decisions on the comfort of chairs or beds after sitting or lying on them for a minute or two, and seldom spend a reasonable amount time trying out a product I am considering purchasing —especially because it is often difficult to find the opportunity.
When I decided my pickup had run its course a couple of years ago, I considered restoring and upgrading a 1960’s pickup I own that had belonged to my father. But I did not think I had the time to spend at that point, so I bought a new one. I took a longer than usual demonstration drive in the city, on some dirt roads, and on the freeway, and of course found it much more impressive than my old one (not surprising since it was brand new, and my old one had definitely run the course). As I said in my post of Jan 16, 2012, which you can see below, my main complaint was that it was too large. But I liked the truck and figured that I could find parking spots that allowed the doors to swing enough to let me enter and exit, that I could put running boards on it to make it easier for my wife to enter and exit, and that I could keep the stuff that ended up behind the seat organized. And I figured that I could open the tail gate and get in and out of the bed from the back to reach objects. But I did not test all of these assumptions before I bought it.
Had I tried to park it in a tight lot, get stuff out from behind the seat, help older people get in and out of it, and gotten in and out of the bed a couple dozen times myself —in other words, better squeezed the oranges— my decision would probably have been to re-work the 60’s truck, since for my use all modern 8 foot bed (full-sized) pickups are difficult to use because they are much larger than they need to be. This summer I will attack my 60’s truck.
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