Side track
I seem to be getting side tracked from my mission on how to reinvent the blog. There are just so many things when it comes to design and technology that I like to highlight. To give you one example: the fire detector in our house.
We have a fire detector on each floor of our house; one in the basement, one on ground floor in the kitchen and one on our top floor next to the bedrooms. They are connected to each other and to our alarm vendor “Securitas” where we have assistance service. When an alarm is triggered on one floor there is a spoken message to inform on what floor the alarm has been set on. So if the alarm goes of in the kitchen it says ” Warning! Fire!” followed by a loud signal. On the other floors the detectors send out a signal an a message “Warning! Fire on another floor!”. Once the alarm is set off our alarm vendors call us on the phone to check if we need assistance or if it was a false alarm.
This is all well and smart in theory. But in reality when the alarm went off the other day from the kitchen this is what happened. I was in the bedroom and ran from there to ground floor, missed the message that I was on the right floor because of the phone ringing at the same time and went down the basement to look for fire. It takes about 3 minutes of fire to fill a room with lethal smoke and I’m not a fast runner. At the same time I had my kids screaming adding to the confusion and stress. My point here? Why not have the other fire detectors mention what floor the fire is on rather than just say “Warning! Fire on another floor!”. So in this example it would say “Warning! Fire on ground floor!” or have an identity set to each fire detector, detector 1, 2 and 3. It should not be impossible to do so technically, should it? I also ask myself if this point could come up in a product testing and if so, why was not this solution implemented?
There is a danger to new technology in safety systems if not well designed. Lucky for us, this was a false alarm but what about when it is not?
Thorough product testing is very important!
annikaharup 
Very good points! As a software tester, I’m familiar with this problem and in many cases an issue can actually be found in testing or even during development, but is decided to not be adjusted. In 99% of these cases, it will be an financial or time factor that triggers the decision (well, in the end it’s always about money…). One term that often is heard is “good enough” in these days of lean production, KanBan and other development schools. Fewer and fewer products in this era of mass fabrication lists high quality as their main feature. It will be interesting to see where this will lead… Perhaps to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKe9OfWs-M
Interesting! But surely there should be a value to what features are ok to leave, making the device “good enough” and a result of a functionality design that actually works against the purpose of the technology? In the case above, having a function say that the fire is on another floor must probably make the user rely on his/her ears rather than his/her eyes that should be the case if there was only a signal, without spoken message? (It has to do with human behavior in a crisis situation) So how are the functions and the result of them valued? (sorry, this might be one of those questions that might need a bigger field for comments….)