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Comment by failwhaleshark | Hacker News Reader

Revell (Japanese) model kit instructions: We will show you every necessary step clearly and precisely using line drawn actions to provide as much accessibility to all people as possible. Only for very complicated concerns will we use language.

Windows 95 UI: It might be fuggly, but you know where the bodies are buried.

IKEA: We will show you how to assemble this sawdust into a crappy bookcase that doesn't sit square or level using line drawings and language inconsistently.

FlatUI: Physical products should delivered as a white box inside another white box without instructions. Tech support is an unnecessary expense.

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That’s one of the most interesting point to me:

Revell must have super clear, most hand holdy instructions possible, for a process that is long and finicky and they assume people will patiently go all the way anyway.

And that’s not just model kits, other Japanese company take the same approach. Finicky and painfully long but clearly explained.

In comparison IKEA spent decades to make shorter, clearer to assemble furnitures, so they can get by with less explaination.

Current day IKEA furniture is way sturdier, easier and faster to deal with than any other flatpack company I’ve seen, Japanese companies included (and I went through a bunch recently…)

> IKEA

A friend of mine posted on her Instagram about a cabinet where she thought the drawer slides were messed up and she couldn't fit the drawers. I looked and just kind of guessed, "is it upside down?". Yep, that was the problem. Apparently the instructions or parts were unclear enough that it was possible to put the feet on the wrong end or something.

This light sometimes blinks green. Sometimes it blinks orange. What does it mean? Who knows.

It's either an Ethernet port light or one of those cryptic things from AliExpress without a manual.

----

There was once someone who knew.

It did have a useful purpose at one point for expert users, technicians, and engineers.

A large group came along chanting "What does it mean?" louder and louder until it was a thunderous war-cry.

The one who knew was trying to shout the answer but he was whispering in a tornado.

Then, someone else said loudly: "I don't understand. Let's just get rid of it."

Most everyone said: "Yeah! It's useless!"

No one listened and now that that understanding is lost like the Antikythera mechanism and Damascus steel to the sands of time.

What does everything need to have a little blue or red LED now? <engage grumpy old man>... I am pretty strict about not letting any electronic devices into my bedroom because when I turn the lights out to go to sleep I don't want to see a constellation of LEDs, some blinking. The blue ones are the worst, for lots of reasons. My phone goes face down or in the nightstand drawer. I got a new window a/c unit a couple of years ago and it has LEDs and a remote control with an LED that blinks. Stop it already.

I wish I could upvote you more than once. I have to stick electrical tape over all of the LEDs in my bedroom, otherwise they disturb my sleep.

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