A few years ago I bought the remote battery operated
irrigation timer shown in the first photo.
The control screen was visible through the
plastic shield for a few months, but then the shield clouded over and it became
necessary to remove it to change the control settings.
It worked well, but as can be seen from the
second photo below (minus the shield), the numbers were miniscule and usually
difficult to see because of faucet location, and in order to set it, it was
necessary to go through the modes shown in the even smaller text at the top of
the screen and press the necessary buttons.
This was not straight forward unless one had the small manual at hand,
and not only does one lose manuals and not want to spend the time to try to
find them on the internet, but really, a single-channel irrigation timer should
not require a manual.
The other day I bought another one made by the same
manufacturer (Orbit) and found an amazing improvement, as can be seen in the
third photo. All of a sudden the
settings
are visible to the normal human, and the functions are obvious, as are
the settings. I am presently reading a
book entitled Trillions; thriving in the Emerging Information Ecology,
by Peter Lucas, Joe Ballay, and Mickey McManus, respectively professor of Human Computer
Interaction at Carnegie Mellon, former head of the School of Design at Carnegie
Mellon, and president and CEO of MAYA Design, a consulting firm specializing in
digital networks and communication. They believe that we are in an early phase
of digital communication and heading in the wrong direction—one that will drown
us in complexity. Among other strong
feelings is that computers and associated networks must speak our language—we
have already gone too far in accommodating to them.
The timer in the third photo speaks our language. That in the first does not. Good for Orbit.
I will talk a bit about design of the cyber world in future posts. I will begin by talking a bit about the Trillions
book. I tend to resonate with its
arguments, having been influenced by people who have also influenced the
authors (Henry Dreyfuss, an early mentor).
In the last few weeks I have gone through the usual projector and sound
system problems in various new and technically sophisticated buildings on
campus, spent a ridiculous amount of time integrating a new blu-ray player into
my excellent (but pre-hdmi) home system, unjamming my fairly new printer,
attempting to re-do my unworkable user name and password collection, and trying
to figure out how to live with the increasing quantity and decreasing quality
of the knowledge on the internet. I have a life to live and I don’t need this
kind of stuff. It’s time for the digital
world to get over itself and start growing up.
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