Cheap Package Design Tricks People Into Dropping Motorola Droid On Floor | Hacker News Reader

Cheap Package Design Tricks People Into Dropping Motorola Droid On Floor

consumerist.com

41 pointscesare16 comments

Donald Norman frowns, sir!

Edit: Do people just not know who Donald Norman is? Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Norman#Partial_bibliogra...

He wrote "The Design of Everyday Thing".

And the amusingly titled but provocative Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions Of Automobiles.

It sort of reminds me of a video I saw when the original iPhone came out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jgYdtBn-8w

I know packaging looks nice and presents the device well, but I think it should be first priority to make sure people can open the thing without dropping it. The iPhone literally requires you to let the bottom part of the packaging fall a bit while you hold on to the top part.

First thing I thought of too. Though at least with the iPhone you knew which way was up, didn't have to take a 50/50 chance.

I prefer this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kGyR55dp8A

sigh Everything is a conspiracy to the Consumerist isn't it?

I had the same thought. I think they're confusing crappy package design (incompetence) with malice.

Really? I think they're saying the cheap design itself is doing the 'tricking', not Verizon or Moto. Which seems fairly accurate.

Instead of 'tricks' they should have used 'causes' or 'results in', or some other phrase that does not imply a negative intention in the design. It's just bad design.

I assumed they were being facetious.

I doubt it - Consumerist is very good at manufacturing outrage, even for minor, accidental transgressions. They're also very good at playing the oppressed consumer card.

Exactly the reason I stopped reading the Consumerist. It's frustrating to see things that are usually careless mistakes misconstrued as big EvilCorp's plot to screw {all consumers, all taxpayers, the world}.

As bad as The Consumerist is, they did teach me what the phrase 'executive customer care' meant. Which has saved me on a few occasions. I wish they'd stick to helping people get just compensation rather than these type of posts.

I stopped reading it too. So much handwringing.

I fail to see a scenario where Moto aims to 'trick' their customers. What paranoia.

I'm not disputing the design of the package but I'm wondering how this is happening to so many people? When I got the droid the Verizon employee took it out of the box, activated it, configured it, and a few other things. They also handed me the phone. Is it possible to do this by mail?

Some of the comments indicated that some salespeople are actually dropping the phones due to the same packaging flaw.

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