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Comment by sonofhans | Hacker News Reader

> People tend to place all of that blame on top-level management or developers within a company. They do deserve the blame - but not all of it. Designers cause a lot of these issues all on their own and it's easy to understand why.

Not to get defensive — I am a designer — but there are two things missing from the conversation when you lay blame at the feet of designers.

First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition.

If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells.

Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells.

The author is totally right that companies often ship software that’s too complex, or solves too many problems and does so poorly. This is mostly because the design/engineering team (a) takes directions from Corporate rather than from users, (b) Corporate wants more features so the product stacks up vs. the competition.

View on HN

> Vote with your feet, and your wallet.

Sure, how do I cast my vote for a non-smart TV? Where do I go to watch my shows via DRM free downloads? How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years?

Beyond that, how do I even compare products and find what I want to "vote" for when everything is named something like Sony XP-3000-ZXS Pro that is exactly like the XP-300ZXS Pro+ except one has a water-proof coating and the other comes with patented GB-Free technology (you guess which is which). And to make it harder to compare, the models are subtly different between countries (Oh, you are in Israel? You only get the XP-300ZXS-B Pro+ which is different from the regular Pro+ but we won't tell you how, better look for some local reviews to be sure).

It is obvious that most companies go out of their way to frustrate the customer's attempts to "vote with their wallet". It must be cheaper to just drill a brand name into their heads via ad spending then to actually produce a good product (definitely more scalable if you already have the money to spend on ads...).

...

Apologies, rant over.

Sceptre[1] makes non-smart-TVs, Miele[2] washing machines are made to last 20 years.

[1] https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV/U557CV-UMRB-55-4K-UHD-T... [2] https://www.mieleusa.com/e/washing-machines-1015696-c

Miele quality has gone really downhill last 10 years. But they do more or less guarantee that you will be able to buy replacement parts for 10 years. (NOT 20!) As long as they don't offer warranty for 10 years or 20 years, I consider the machine to be on a 5-10 year lifecycle, like most appliances today.

If their machines really would last that long, they would market the hell out of it !explicitly! and offer you that assurance to get your money. Now they are just cruising by on their reputation they built last millenium

The good days are over sadly.

> As long as they don't offer warranty for 10 years or 20 years, I consider the machine to be on a 5-10 year lifecycle, like most appliances today.

That's not how it works. If a product on average lasts 20 years, you can't give a 20-year warranty because life expectancy has a highly skewed distribution. If one out of three machines live for 40 years and two out of three machines live for 10 years, that is 20 years on average, yet you will make a loss on 2/3 of the machines.

> I consider the machine to be on a 5-10 year lifecycle, like most appliances today. The good days are over sadly.

In reality, it's just a rationalization for buying cheap crap: you just assume that all products are equally bad, and then you just buy the cheapest stuff you can find. That's how we ended up where we are now.

Sceptre certainly keeps that hidden! They need better marketers! For that price point and non-smart, I would have absolutely bought recently. But I have never heard of this brand until today.

I have a Sceptre.

Let's just say you get what you pay for. If you're concerned about screen quality, you should probably look elsewhere.

I do love how dumb it is, though!

Fisher and Paykel also make washing machines that last.

https://www.fisherpaykel.com/nz/laundry/washing-machines/

I appreciate your comment for trying to be helpful (and too many sibling comments to reply to also), so apologies if I seem dismissive in my response but...

I've heard of Sceptre via HN (and as a sibling comment points out, their quality is not great), but they aren't available for purchase in my country. In fact, from a quick search of the local aggregator there isn't a single 4k non-smart TV for sale in the country. I've sort of voted with my wallet here and am just using a large computer monitor for now, but I'm not sure there'll be anything available if I ever want to get some of those sweet OLEDs or some HDR.

Another sibling comment also said that recently Miele has started coasting based on their name brand and are no longer producing long-lasting machines, but even if they aren't I won't be able to tell that the next time I find myself in need of a washing machine, which is part of the problem.

> they aren't available for purchase in my country

As another commter pointed out they are sold as commercial displays and digital signage, but that is a different price range.

> Another sibling comment also said that recently Miele has started coasting

People have always said that. It's an easy excuse to buy the cheapest stuff they can find, but in reality you'll always find products made for commercial customers. An appliance that lasts a dozen years in a hotel, restaurant or airport will last practically forever in a home.

Everything Sceptre sell appears to be "restock soon" or "out of stock" - is this a real company?

Regardless, they don't appear to retail out of the US, so it's hardly a good option for most people.

Thanks for sharing!

What’s your evidence for Miele’s durability? Is it just their “pro at home” line, or all of them?

Pretty much everything from Miele is built to last for decades. But it is expensive.

There are plenty of non-smart TVs, at least, and plenty of HN threads telling you where to look (they are sold as commercial displays and digital signage). You will really have to vote with your wallet, though, because the smart TVs come with hundreds of dollars of price discount based on bundling of streaming service clients and their ability to send consumer tracking data.

Not always - Sony Bravia conference room displays seem to be rebranded consumer models with clean firmware and the price is affordable. Maybe a small markup but nowhere near what you get on a digital signage display (and also it retains all the advantages of a consumer-grade TV such as speakers, remote, etc).

I spent months on this recently. Commercial displays are rarely available in retail quantities (e.g 1) in my country, and the few that are lack basics such as multiple HDMI ports, HDR, etc.

The options may be greater for you, but they're limited for most of us.

> everything is named something like Sony XP-3000-ZXS Pro that is exactly like the XP-300ZXS Pro+ except…

This drives me crazy. I don’t get how companies get this so wrong. I just spent hours looking for a tumble dryer and they’re all like that.

Who are the people at these companies who think it’s a good idea to name your product a completely opaque alphanumeric jumble?

Oh I know that one.

It’s because they have slightly different models names for differ markets, and they figured out that using their internal code names was easier than paying someone to come up with easy, memorable names. So the model sold in Delaware is the UX-7200-D, and the one sold in The Netherlands is exactly the same item with a different power cord and instruction booklet. But it’s called NT-376xd because the Netherlands branch is actually a different company that was bought 2 years ago and they are still using their old system which has different codes for products.

I usually have the reverse problem: the "memorable" marketing names are vague and have no clear indication of what's newer or what's better. Sometimes each is trying to convince you it's the best[1], meanwhile the internal engineering designations (sometimes discoverable on or in the product) more commonly have a clear progression[2], despite alphanumeric soup (a 2300X -Q3N is likely older than a 2317X-1A, and both are inferior to a 2600X-PTN-J).

Seems to me, Motorola's phone names in USA went off the deep end sometime after the Moto G7, while international versions of many of the same phones retained their nice simple sequential numbering scheme.

[1] Don't get me started on people who produce n versions of something then decide to name the next version "One" (or similar) "because its the only One you need, the best One; it's The One!" (when they really mean, "Weird, people can't figure out why they should upgrade when we didn't change anything much!")…which of course just screws them when they next try to get people to upgrade. …Oh, seems I got very thoroughly started. :faceplant:

[2] Ignoring Sharp models for their phones and tablets, which can have name elements where a descending sequence in part of the name and an ascending sequence in another part of the same name identify whether this is a higher or lower model. And ignoring Apple, which decades ago decided reusing model IDs over and over is FineTM, forcing horrible things like "Well, it's a late 2015 iBook 15-inch with the <special feature that means you have a different case/keboard/camera/…> and the <special upgrade that means you have a different motherboard>".

> How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years?

Try:

    site:reddit.com inurl:BuyItForLife "washing machine"

> Sure, how do I cast my vote for a non-smart TV

Don't buy one. There are plenty of other options. Computer monitors, for example, can double for a display and TV. This one is excellent (had mine for about a year without any problems):

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B099PJ8SPT

reddit is chock-full of astroturfing and someone's washer brand lasting 20 years doesn't mean their modern model will last 20 years.

>How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years?

In all seriousness, check second hand sites like Facebook Marketplace.

The price of an item new in the shops often has low correlation with its quality, but second-hand markets are ridiculously frugal and rational.

Even if you don't want to buy used goods, the fact that an item which cost $499 ten years ago still sells for $300 used is a real testament to the quality of the brand.

Low quality crap will usually lose at least 50% of its value once you've opened the box, and another 50% yet again after just a couple of years' use.

I do this exactly. My washer and dryer are both over 20 years old and cost less than $200 each, used and mechanically refurbished. They have a couple dials each and do their jobs predictably.

assuming the brand still has the same standards today as they had 10 years ago. In many many cases that is not the case. After 2008-2012 quality of appliances reeeallllly went downhill

> How can I find a washing machine that will last for 20 years?

I know this one! You buy one build in the 70's maybe 80's chose the ones with crazy rpm

Bought a smart tv, but don't use the smart parts. The invitation to use the smart features closes itself after about 15 seconds, no problem.

> Where do I go to watch my shows via DRM free downloads?

Vote with your feet becomes a bit more interesting here since the legal options are limited.

I suppose you could say: Vote with your sails.

> Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells.

This is the defeatist attitude that largely explains why we're stuck in this race to the bottom.

A lot of the mass produced stuff we surround and find ourselves surrounded with has gotten worse. This is not because people want worse things. It is because of hidden and opaque incentive structures that are completely misdirected. By leaving it to the market with such a pithy attitude, we divest collective responsibility and instead assign it to some mystical process.

Coffee makers are the least of it. Our material surroundings absolutely suck. Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest society ever on this planet is basically made real in plastic, disposable, malfunctioning shit. For my own sanity, I have to reject that this state of affairs is the expression of our collective wishes through the workings of the market.

Oh, I'm not being defeatist about it, just trying to offer the best practical advice I have.

> Like, in america, it's absolutely degrading how the wealthiest society ever on this planet is basically made real in plastic, disposable, malfunctioning shit. For my own sanity, I have to reject that this state of affairs is the expression of our collective wishes through the workings of the market.

I agree with you. People in this society are making the best choices they can from a selection of poor or harmful options. We're programmed from birth to place value on things that have no inherent value. Our society in the USA is rich but ungenerous, which is awfully strange. The country as a whole generates vastly more resources than necessary to keep everyone in it safe, healthy, and fed, and yet we allocate those resources towards other things (e.g., entertainment, over-consumption, concentration of resources in the hands of a few).

That's all a much bigger problem than coffee makers, but they're inextricably tied. Personally I don't think we can solve the coffee maker problem without solving the legalized political bribery / "campaign finance" problem first; that blocks progress on many obviously humane ideas.

> just trying to offer the best practical advice I have

It's good advice. But imho it doesn't scale in the way it should, in the way the "invisible hand" should work.

The main thing is that imho consumers have too little leverage to really make meaningful impact.

e.g. I have a microwave form '82 that still works flawlessly. That was a bargain model at the time. More recent "luxury" appliances have broken within 10 years of ownership on me. How can a consumer, today, possibly be certain they're getting the high quality thing that will last decades? It's absolutely impossible, standing in a store, choosing a thing based on price/feature-set to get the durable vs disposable. That trade-off just cannot be made for the majority of material things in stores.

The same with feature-less vs feature-full. Once you go feature-less, options completely dwindle. That's the curse. If the market does work, it flattens everything not to best-of-breed or bang-for-buck but instead to lowest-common-denominator, sub-optimal.

> Our society in the USA is rich but ungenerous, which is awfully strange.

100%

> I don't think we can solve the coffee maker problem without solving the legalized political bribery

also, 100%

>It is because of hidden and opaque incentive structures that are completely misdirected.

While this is true, the parent is still true too. The issue is that companies make these cheap, easily broken devices and consumers keep buying them because the alternative is living with the inconvenience of not having that class of product. It's not a defeatist attitude, it's the truth. Unless people stop buying Keurig coffee-makers with dual functions, the data these companies are using for marketing and development show that that's what people buy.

The choice here is: If I don't want to support these cheap Keurig junk machines, do I just buy another cheap junk machine from someone else or do I buy a French Press and make my coffee the old-fashioned way in the morning? I'm trading convenience for quality. Despite what you think, that's still a choice that consumers make that fuels the race to the bottom.

> The issue is that companies make these cheap, easily broken devices and consumers keep buying them because the alternative is living with the inconvenience of not having that class of product.

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

I'm familiar with the Boots theory but that's not really what I meant. Boots are a necessity. Coffee makers are a luxury.

those old porcelain hand cranked grinders offer just the right amount of exercise for the morning, you put it in a glass filter like professional coffee tasters use. Or at least, those are my thoughts/memories every day while I stand there waiting in front of my fully automatic machine that resembles an alien space ship.

Lots of people genuinely do prefer the cheaper (and thus lower quality) product. There isn’t always such a trade off, and there are other reasons to buys things. But low price is commonly a dominant factor.

No, Americans have seen their real take home pay stagnate for fifty years while the major costs of being alive have significantly increased, and thus are stuck using the same pile of money to attempt to pay for and obtain necessary and desirable things for less than they would have previously.

They don't prefer cheaper, they can't afford not cheaper

"They don't make it like they used to" is like a society wide exclamation that you can't buy high quality stuff anymore because nobody can afford to buy high quality stuff so nobody can afford to make high quality stuff.

This lower basket of income also means americans can't afford to pay the going rates for labor to fix their stuff, meaning something being repairable isn't useful or beneficial in any way, so everything becomes disposable.

Small towns used to have niche repair businesses, but who can afford to spend $100 on getting a boot repaired, especially when a new boot is $80 at walmart. So now the cobbler has to shutter his business and he can't afford good stuff anymore either, so now if you DO buy the expensive boots and need them repaired to make them worth their price, you have to seek out a much more expensive specialist or do it yourself which most people cannot do. Money was basically shipped out of local economies into giant megacorps.

A lot of stuff isn't even significantly less repairable then it used to be. Flatscreen TVs are super reliable now that they are solid state, with the one exception of the AC power circuitry. Anyone with $20 and a multimeter and youtube and a little confidence can watch tutorials to debug and fix a blown cap on the power supply, but nobody could really run a business on charging $100 to repair $200 flat panel TVs because people can't afford that.

Meanwhile "Electronics repair" used to be a common small town business.

> By leaving it to the market with such a pithy attitude, we divest collective responsibility and instead assign it to some mystical process.

I think of it the other way around. If you do not vote with your wallet/feet, then you are avoiding taking responsibility for your personal decisions. The act of purchasing something creates a very small signal, but a signal all the same. It's not unlike civic duty and how a single vote is virtually meaningless but in aggregate is powerful.

> The act of purchasing something creates a very small signal, but a signal all the same.

I agree with that certainly. Change starts individually. It really does, I mean that genuinely. As persons, as actual men and women in this world, we need to internalize the values we like to see flourish in the world. We just must. It would not be honorable if we did not.

> but in aggregate is powerful

The sleight of hand though is that this individual action, in and of itself, can always bring about meaningful change in every situation. It cannot. This disconnect between individual action and aggregate outcome is the main characteristic of a tragedy of the commons. To go back to the coffee maker example, the fact that our world is, well, quite literally, trash is such a tragedy. These traps never resolve solely bottom-up, without coordination.

> It's not unlike civic duty and how a single vote

Voting is a good example really. A vote is the lowest, least effective way to perform our civic duty. To see the change we like to see in the world, to do our civic duty, we must advocate, picket, canvas, stand on soapboxes, fraternize, run for office, assemble, cajole, badger, pick up arms, ... That is what it means to participate in civic society. A vote, that single small signal, means nothing, if we do not actively shape what we vote for.

fwiw - I really don't think we disagree. Just wanted to expand on that train of thought a little.

Thanks for expanding on that train of thought. Your elaboration with civic duty is apt.

> First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features

Well no. I bought it because I didn't have a choice. (Literal coffee makers are actually an exception here). I bought the featurefull version because i wanted a specific feature and my options were basic with 7 features I don't need, pro with 19 features I don't need and ultra with 200 features i don't need and the 1 i do need.

Or maybe some obscure other brand has exactly what i need but discovering it is impossible because all 10^9 drop shippers sell only the basic and pro model above, and the rest of the brands are just white label rebrands of the above with slightly different plastic molding and some of the features disabled.

It does take two to tango, but this response is frustrating to me because it illustrates the lack of ethics/expectations in the design profession/community. (I am also a designer)

Companies create the problems the features purport to solve, not the market. Yadda yadda faster horse quote, but it's true: people don't ask for (or need) much … so where does the divergence come from?

To designers: Why do we allow such rubbish to be created? We know we can't put up too much fuss or we'll be worked around or replaced … by another designer who will willingly turn the crank for the biscuit. How do we not have more to push back with?

I actually laughed out loud when I clicked the link and it was Keurig. K-cups rank right up there with Dyson imho. Yea, it kind of solves a problem, but mostly it's great marketing.

They created a problem people didn't realize they had, drove demand for a solution no one asked for, and charge a premium so you can create more waste per cup.

But, it's cheaper then stopping at Starbucks...

> K-cups rank right up there with Dyson imho. Yea, it kind of solves a problem, but mostly it's great marketing

This ignores the fact that Dyson invented the modern bagless cyclonic upright vacuum design that was subsequently adopted by the whole industry. Without that improved design, I suspect that Dyson would have had a harder time displacing Hoover in the UK, where "hoovering" was (and is?) a generic term for "vacuuming." (Though I suppose Xerox and Kleenex have been somewhat displaced in the US in spite of their history as generic terms for photocopying and tissues, and Apple discontinued the iPod even though "podcast" had become a generic term. Etc..)

(Apple is also frequently criticized as an overpriced, marketing-driven company; in my opinion this ignores Apple's troubles before products such as the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch transformed their respective categories.)

I bought a refurbished Dyson DC07 vacuum years ago that I'm still using; besides its performance I like the way the parts snap together and the associated labeling/diagrams.

It is made of plastic though, and I could imagine parts becoming brittle and eventually breaking. Electrolux canister vacuums from the 1930s still work and you can get bags for them, but they lose suction as the bags fill up, and you have to buy bags periodically.

My Dyson vacuum cleaner has been exceptionally good for like a decade now.

Keurigs make horrendous coffee and create orders of magnitude more waste. I'm not sure how they're the same.

Dyson takes the cheapest panasonic parts that exists, puts a fancy case around it, and sells it for massive margins. Here's a detailed teardown of a dyson vacuum: https://youtu.be/NPTzNJMd19A

Try a Miele next time, that's a genuine high quality vacuum cleaner that will last you a lifetime.

While they are probably overpriced, if you buy from Dyson you know you are getting pretty good quality. My prior vacuums were from Shark and Hoover and they sucked in the wrong way. While I probably could have gotten a decent vacuum from one of those well-known generic vacuum companies, going with Dyson assured I'd get something much better than I previously had. If I saw a Miele vacuum on the shelf, I'd have no idea what to expect, given have never heard of the brand before.

Miele is a well-known up-market household appliances and devices manufacturer from Germany. Generally Miele is considered to last a lifetime, though their first few wifi enabled appliances and devices were horrible.

Many years ago my father-in-law gave us a commercial vacuum (Windsor Sensor) that's typically used in hotels and hospitals. The thing's built like a tank and is easily serviced. It's a good choice if you don't mind a heavy vacuum, and it's only incrementally more expensive than a Dyson.

We looked at what the staff were using a couple of hotels and bought the ORECK XL COMMERCIAL. It is a simple vacuum with bags so it’s easy to clean. No extra features to break. The price was much cheaper than any Dyson vacuum. It’s been dead reliable for over 10 years and seems like it will just keep running.

I have a Miele C4 and there’s no way it’s going to last a lifetime. The mechanicals may be metal but everything else is made of plastic that seems to be getting more brittle as time passes. Mine has cracks and has broken in a couple of places and so far I’ve been able to glue it, but I should probably replace the case. Miele doesn’t seem to carry these parts for mine anymore so looking for used parts on eBay is probably my only solution.

Rather than take a chance buying somebody else’s cracked case, I’m probably going to replace it. When I do, I’m going to spend less money next time understanding that I’ll have to replace it after 5-10 years.

How'd that happen? I'm using a Complete C2, in fact, "abusing it" would be a more apt description considering how careless I've treated it at times, and it's still in perfect shape. (I did break one of those telescope tubes though).

Out of curiosity, how are any of these consumer-grade vacuums better than an entry-level shop vac you can get for 30 bucks?

More often than not in my experience feature creep originates from marketing/sales. It's their job to sell more units, if that doesn't happen they get a bad review.

Frankly, "Make product X do more stuff" is a legitimate way for them to accomplish their goals. But I tend to think if your primary market is sufficiently large, it's better to go deep on solving a specific problem better than anyone else. That said it sure seems like a lot (most?) of the biggest successes in software, from Windows and Office to WeChat, bundle in everything but the kitchen sink.

A big part of product and marketing is “differentiation”. You have to give the customer a reason to select your product over N other possibilities in the market.

If your functions are a subset of everyone else, and your only benefit is “it works better”, it’s a tough sell. And in a lot of cases people don’t care - eg if your appliance product lasts 5 years compared to 3 years, but studies show on average consumers will upgrade every 2 years (maybe they receive one as a gift), then you don’t stand out at all.

It’s just basic product/marketing that if you can say “hey ours has a timer and no one else does” you can draw a lot of customers. It’s your foot in the door, but you should also strive to compete in the fundamentals

Makes sense. I think the OP is not unsympathetic, although not as familiar with what it's like to be a designer.

> The only advice I can give to designers is this: try not to add to the problem. I'm not asking you to move mountains, but maybe consider working somewhere else if your career exists solely to add more bloat to the world. (Easier said than done, I know). Or keep doing what you're doing. What do I know - I'm just some guy who rambles on the web.

Designers in graphic and physical design, with regard to over-complexity and physical waste, which the OP was talking about with the coffee maker -- have been talking about this, and about what the designer's ethical responsibility is in an environment where the business constraints/pressures may be to create things that don't make things better for people... for 50 years now.

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/why-ken-garlands-first-things-f...

Yes, basically the only way to sell the one-purpose, well-made solution is to target customers/clients who already got burned with the more popular option. Which means that you confine your product to a small or professional niche.

That's where the product lines Professional, Commercial and Industrial come from! Oftentimes you'll notice these items have fewer features but a higher build quality.

Yes, exactly, that's what I do as much as possible. I have a commercial microwave with literally one control, and a handle; it doesn't even have buttons. I expect it to outlive me, given that I put it through 1/1000 the duty cycle of the commercial kitchen for which it's designed.

> First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition.

Is this true for all appliances?

The toaster and the refrigerator seem functionally complete to me.

More features = more problems = I don't want them for my toaster.

> ... the refrigerator seem functionally complete to me.

And yet fridges are the first product in the kitchen to receive a 24-inch monitor from Samsung :P :P

Want some DRM with that?

https://www.ifixit.com/News/41709/welcome-to-drm-water-ges-i...

All I could find for toasters was short fiction... for now

>First, you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features. If you want to sell an appliance today, you have to cram in more features, and do it more cheaply than the competition.

I'm in retail (e-commerce, selling retro video games), and this is 100% my experience.

There is a certain type of customer who is prepared to pay extra for quality and durability, but they are swamped by the overwhelming majority of the market who try to optimise for features and price.

It's reached the stage now where we no longer even bother bundling official accessories with many consoles we sell, as the overwhelming majority of people will not just prefer but pay extra to get bigger bundles containing multiple third-party controllers, ludicrously large Alibaba memory cards and "free" copies of FIFA/Assassin's Creed (which are otherwise so low-value we actually gut them to re-use the case).

The same market will also pay an extra $40 or so to get a 1TB HDD installed in their PS3s, even though the average person probably only uses 10-20GB (it reached the point where we always upgrade anything smaller than 500GB as it doesn't make economic sense to do otherwise).

It really is understated how badly people want features, even ones they'll never use or get in the way of their enjoyment of the product.

There's a few things going on here though.

If you're buying a PS3 bundle you probably don't already own a PS3. So you probably don't know what storage you will actually need.

The games may be worthless to you, but if you wanted to actually buy it, it's going to cost something even if it's to cover the postage.

3rd party controllers. If you know they're going to be used regularly then 1st party is the way to go, but a second controller for me has always been a little used just in case thing.

And this is all assuming it isn't a parent buying it for child, that has no idea what they're after, and a buying a bundle so they know it will all work together.

I think you're also underestimating the value add. If I buy an AliExpress memory card, I have to work out if it's going to work as advertised etc, if it doesn't I then have the pain of getting my money back and waiting for a replacement. If I buy from you as part of a bigger purchase I have an expectation that you've found a card that works, and presumably don't want to torpedo a $100+ sale over a $2 memory card.

If I were to buy a PS3 now, I would need at least a subset of these things, I would have to work out compatibility, wait for everything to arrive, and if it doesn't all work, I have to work out what the issue is an sort a replacement. All in all, if you sell me all the elements, if it doesn't work, I get some come back, even that copy of assassin's creed. I may never play it, but if it doesn't work, it stops me being in a situation where game seller says the games are ok, you need to clean the optical drive, and the console seller saying the games are scratched.

> Vote with your feet

The problem with this is that it is an ambiguous signal. If a product is best on 3/4 features that I care about, buying it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about that fourth feature. Likewise, not buying it would suggest that I don’t care about those other three features, which isn’t the case.

Voting with your feet only makes sense when there is one feature you care about. For example for insurance with a minimum amount of coverage, the only factor I care about is price.

> If you want companies to produce simpler, higher-quality products, then search out and buy those products. Vote with your feet, and your wallet. Companies build what sells.

But what sells is only that which is for sale.

How do I vote with my wallet for products that companies refuse to build?

In nearly every market category, I want products which are extremely simple, easy to maintain, difficult to break (due to simplicity) and built to the highest possible standard of craftsmanship. Turns out that in nearly every market category, such products don't exist.

I'm very sympathetic to designs at the beck and call of someone else making the decision on features, but I'm not sure that some of the points above are the right way to frame it.

> you bought that over-complicated appliance for the same reason everyone else does: it has more features, and you like features. Everyone wants features.

I don't think this is accurate for a substantial part of the population. A novel-length feature list is a guaranteed way to ensure that no one really understands what your product does. A product I worked on had the usual hundreds of features and novel-length user guide, and probably one of the most common questions our support team would ingest was "can product X do thing Y?" which was even just a quick online search away.

Featureful updates I think look better for the people investing in the product, not the ones selling/buying it. It justifies expenditures, can be correlated to growth/progress, etc. For specialized products, e.g., coffee makers, I have personal doubts that a substantial amount of buyers care much more than reading a few reviews to confirm that the product "makes good coffee" or " is easy to clean".

> Second, that designer likely has as much real agency as the engineers building the firmware for the control board. Corporate mandated 12 months ago, “A coffee maker with features A, B, and C and price point P and trim level T.” The designer likely has no place to argue with any of that. A product marketing executive made these decisions, and for one reason — to build what sells.

This one I agree with mostly, except for the "build what sells" part. What sells is what the company effectively SEO spams and price-points well within the market. Let's not forget Juicero's history and how well it sold until someone did the groundbreaking journalism of actually using the device and showing how ridiculous it was. I think it helps support the idea that enough moxy/aggressive marketing, you can get just about anything to fly for awhile to turn a profit. And Juicero is just one example of many such things; I doubt that the executive guidance on Juicero was anything more than "Make it squish these bags, read our juice DRM, and set up a subscription service to buy more juice bags."

The answer to this is pretty complex I guess, as voting with our wallets is historically pretty ineffective at enacting change. There are a lot of tricks that can be used to make hot garbage a top seller; Amazon is raking in billions doing just this and has been for years, despite constant outrage articles and proof of the garbage-ness of the services.

At a certain point, change does need to come from within the company rather than external pressures; the market gets fooled really easily by fancy enough presentations and rich enough people talking about a failed product for 30 seconds.

I think that's why the author made the call-out; I read it as fairly tongue in cheek, but it has an element of truth that the pushback likely needs to come internally; I think the author though, and many people, realize this is not as simple of a situation as that though for the points you mentioned about executive decisions. I don't think designers should completely abandon their agency though on products; saving money is pretty persuasive to the decision makers, and probably _that_ is the best way to influence products via a wallet. Just it's the company's wallet, not the consumers.

> probably one of the most common questions our support team would ingest was "can product X do thing Y?" which was even just a quick online search away.

That's a very biased way of looking at it. Just because some customers were confused by the feature list doesn't mean most customers were. You just never hear from people who don't have questions.

> It justifies expenditures, can be correlated to growth/progress, etc. For specialized products, e.g., coffee makers, I have personal doubts that a substantial amount of buyers care much more than reading a few reviews to confirm that the product "makes good coffee" or " is easy to clean".

The claim that feature lists can correlate with growth, but also that customers are not interested in feature lists, sounds like a contradiction to me. If customers are not interested in feature lists, then there should be no correlation.

> What sells is what the company effectively SEO spams and price-points well within the market. Let's not forget Juicero's history and how well it sold until someone did the groundbreaking journalism of actually using the device and showing how ridiculous it was.

Doesn't Juicero actually show the exact opposite? Despite all the advertising and multiple price reductions, Juicero was an absolute slow seller.

> There are a lot of tricks that can be used to make hot garbage a top seller; Amazon is raking in billions doing just this and has been for years, despite constant outrage articles and proof of the garbage-ness of the services.

There are few online stores with such a wide range of products and such fast delivery as Amazon. Garbage-ness is relative when everyone else is garbage-er.

To me the "build what sells" theory sounds much more convincing than the "it's all about advertising" theory.

> The answer to this is pretty complex I guess, as voting with our wallets is historically pretty ineffective at enacting change. There are a lot of tricks that can be used to make hot garbage a top seller; Amazon is raking in billions doing just this and has been for years, despite constant outrage articles and proof of the garbage-ness of the services.

Yes, I agree, and I think this is a large part of the problem. If I get my neighbor John the blacksmith to make me a plow and it doesn't work quite right, I'm sure he'll fix it for me. That's a very short and direct economic chain, and it's based on personal relationships and geography, two things that humans do very well.

If I buy an over-featured electronic piece of crap from Alibaba, from the merchant who'll sell it for $1 less than the competition -- I don't think I can model or count the economy of that purchase.

And I think that the lack of personal relationships does more of a zap on our heads than we realize. We've not evolved to exist in a pathological environment, where a huge amount of the communication we receive is designed to manipulate us, and to our detriment. We yearn for real relationships we can trust, and over-index on signs of trust in vendors, like star ratings on Amazon. Amazon, who literally employs an army of people to game this as much as possible. It's an awfully asymmetric relationship.

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