My best and worst technology experiences

Around the changeover of the year one gets to thinking about events of the departing one. Unfortunately, some of the events that stuck in my mind involved technology, which, on a number of occasions, intruded into life, and sometimes took over completely.

So I set off to find ten best and ten worst technology experiences but have two problems in that there are many worse experiences than better, and that I would be stretching to make it ten of each, but here, somewhat later than intended, are some best and worst experiences of the last 12 months.

Worst:
1. Samsung surround sound
Some friends bought a very attractive Samsung plasma screen last year, but were disappointed with the sound quality. They had heard my home cinema system and their children went on a campaign for one of their own to get the most of deep explosions and flying bullet effects.

My own experience of home cinema has been OK but I was well aware of the complications caused by 5 channel receivers, DVD’s and TV remote controls that all seem to be needed at the same time, so I recommended that they stick with one brand where set up and basic operation would be simpler, I reasoned.

My reasoning was wrong.

They duly went out and bought a Samsung DVD with 5 channel system that was great value for money and would, as I predicted, be compatible with the TV and easy to set up. It was delivered on a Saturday morning. They called me at lunchtime.

By the time I got there it was getting stressful. Even oldest teenager couldn’t sus it out. A number of basic operations seemed impossible. They could get sound and no picture, then vice versa, and had no idea of how to change from TV to DVD. It only worked by turning everything off and then turning the box you wanted to watch back on, which was ridiculous for every day use.

I played with it for an hour, getting nowhere, apart from the land of techno frustration, and eventually caved in to talk to the help line. It was engaged of course, but eventually we got through and went through the whole set up procedure again.

It transpired that what we wanted to do, simple though it seemed to us, had not been envisaged by Samsung. My friends had assumed that when they moved back to the normal TV after watching a DVD, the sound would still come through the speakers they had bought. They were wrong. Samsung assumed it would be perfectly natural for the sound to revert to the crappy little speakers in the TV. Having spoken for an hour to an increasingly irate technical support line, he finally admitted that we could achieve what we wished by going up to the unit and pressing the function button to chose the digital input from the cable box.

That meant that of the 30+buttons on the remote control, only 3 of which would ever be used, the one button they actually needed was not on the remote but on the main unit and they have to get up and go across the room to press it, as indeed they now do every evening.

The man on the support line said that we had bought the wrong unit (despite it’s prominent advertising in Currys.com), it was not really meant for normal TV. What manager at Samsung decreed that they would make it as difficult as possible to watch normal TV through your marvellous 5 channel system? He also advised us that we would do just as well by putting the sound through a conventional stereo hi-fi, which I thought an odd admission which also made me look stupid in front of my friends for suggesting the 5 channel system (we were on speaker phone).

My friends are now talking to me again but they did not enjoy the experience. I had to write out a step by step flow diagram of how to change from TV to DVD and back again without having to call the support line, which they refer to every evening.

I will never recommend any technology again. I will never recommend Samsung again. But I doubt they are any worse than the rest of them. Every box developed in it’s own world, designed by people who worry about advanced set ups and features and who don’t think for a minute that we might want to listen to the TV through the speaker system as well as the DVD. My blood boils just recalling the whole sorry weekend.

2. Digital Clocks
My family and I came back from a few days in New York at the end of October. It was good timing because we came back on the day before the clocks changed, so had an extra hour in bed to recover on the Sunday.

However, the hour we gained was quickly lost when we spied the number of clocks in the house that we then had to change. Central heating, the video recorder, answer phone, microwave, oven, kids watches, two watches myself, 3 alarm clocks and the alarm system, all with completely different user interfaces.

Then we got in the car to drive to my aged mother in law and did the same thing.

In the car we saw the Audi Multi Media Interface showing the wrong time. Surely this would be easy to change. I vaguely remembered that I had done it previously when we drove to Europe in the summer. But I couldn’t remember where in the menu list it was. I found after a week. It was a Eureka moment. I felt proud. I rushed into the house, the family whooped with joy. It felt like I had successfully completed a task in a computer game and could now go on to the higher level. Audi, you should be ashamed.

3. Microphones
Whenever I worry that my suggestion that almost no technology works is a bit over the top, I do a conference with a microphone and am reminded that I am right. Microphones are ubiquitous objects and yet so many events are blighted by their non function. At the Design Council several years ago, every event was a disaster, despite, or perhaps because of, a state of the art system. Mobile phones, poor acoustics, low batteries were all blamed. All I know is that they never work. Feedback, mysteriously cutting out, not working an inch away and then screeching up close. As I often feel, just making it work is differentiation in technology.

4. Video converter
I bought a system to convert old analogue video tapes to digital. It «works», in that I have successfully converted some tapes but about half the DVD’s don’t work, which you don’t know until the hour long tape has played through and then the program freezes whilst creating chapter headings. Again, whole weekends dedicated to and lost thanks to technology that promises so much and delivers so poorly.

5. Gmail
A horrible interface, I can never find the send button. The proof that perpetual beta can mean perpetual crap. I don’t use it any more, I just store all my mails from other accounts there.

6. Web browsers
New Google web browser on PC, a complete mystery. I just want home, favourites, history. Where are they! And it looks a complete mess, especially the back buttons.

Best
1. iPhone
I have written 2 blogs about the iPhone already so you can read those. But not every one loves it. I had a conversation with a very traditionally minded head of technology for a well known broadcasting/ web company some months ago where he bought out his iPhone and told me what a load of rubbish it is, whereon I produced mine to refute him and we had a sort of Star Wars battle, waving our iPhones at each other.

He was right in a sense, in that it does have some problems in it’s phone behaviour. Not being able to send a text to more than 1 person is just silly and I hope a stupid mistake that will be, or maybe even has already been resolved. Sometimes cancel or send is too close to other important buttons.

But it still represents the greatest leap in how we deliver the great advantages of technology in an accessible, understandable and enjoyable way. All this will become the norm over time and Nokia, Microsoft, Amazon (especially after the disastrous Kindle) will be forced to break out of the myopic and technocratic view of how to deliver technology.

2. Skype
Some one said to me that it would only take a minute to set up and it did. It’s nice to use. It has an emotional component , though «take a deep breath» does get a bit annoying every time you start up. It takes a while to understand the pros and cons of admitting you are on line or being invisible but I got into contact with good people of whom I had lost email addresses or who had moved on to places far away. I can’t see how eBay will make money from it but I like the user experience.

3. Fasthosts web hosting
Helpful, clearly written, easy to use web hosting for beginners and experts alike. They had a problem with passwords but dealt with it well.

So there are some good and bad. There is always an excuse for the bad experience, you have the wrong model, it’s incompatible, why do you want to do that, and other versions that make you feel it’s your fault. But it’s not. It’s their fault. The immense effort and investment that goes into technology with the promise that it will work is wasted and thrown away by the inability of management and technocrats to spend a penny on design, research, or the culture to be people focused .

Do send me your examples, including Orange‘s, I will post them up, perhaps on a new page or even site. I shall call it technologydoesn’twork.com.