Try reading the cr*p that comes from any of our so-called lib arts academic types.
At least the engineers make things that work (software engineers excepted).
Too many companies ignore the “human engineering” aspect of the products that they sell. This wasn’t the case at all when ‘Boomers were growing up.
To turn on my phone, I hit the ‘off’ button. To turn off my computer, I click the ‘on’ button. These things can’t reflect stupidity - they are the manufacturers showing contempt for their customers.
As for the article - they don’t put writing on the buttons because they want to use the same design world wide, and want to pretend that most of the world can’t understand English.
We have been going downhill ever since they replaced ‘On and Off’ with 1 and 0......................
Eschew obfuscation!
I prefer it over Hindi or Mexican.
With sufficient synergy this sort of paradigm shift will be available real soon now. Configurations of grammatical constructs and identification of proper vocabulistic choices should be well within tolerances for engineers.
— an engineer
Luddite.
I love Sowell, but perhaps he protesteth too much this time.
Even paper editions of newspapers shuffle stuff around and change names (Editorial sections are often re-named to Opinion and such).
And your car ignition switch isn’t labelled, either. But even if you only drive once a year, you should have an idea what to look for.
He might have a point about the fuel release lever, though.
I’m in whole-hearted agreement with Sowell on this.
It’s not the engineers that decide how to label buttons.
Besides, what is the problem with ‘power’ to label a button that is dual purpose on/off?
That’s not technobabble, it’s iconization. Switching from words to icons make life a lot easier when you go international. When you sell your product in a non-English speaking country the word “configuration” needs to be translated, a picture of gears does not. Which can be handy even for English speakers, when my in-laws got too close to Mexico and their Garmin switched to Spanish those icons made it easy for me to fix, I don’t know the Spanish word for “configuration” or “language”, but I do know what gears and a person talking stand for.
Very big problem. I see it everywhere. Computers, smartphones, cameras, electronic devices, cars.
One of my biggest peeves is instruction booklets. I’ve been known to see red over user manuals that are poorly written. I don’t understand Chinese, or English based on Chinese grammar.
Engineers determine how a product works, lay out the general package envelope, and plan its manufacturing process. Industrial designers create the external shape, appearance, and human interface. Of course product managers and marketing executives make most of the the final decisions.
Engineers appreciate and speak more technical correctness per paragraph than anyone else, especially in the workplace. If they don’t, they’re out of a job.
_start:
mov edx,len
mov ecx,msg
mov ebx,1
mov eax,4
int 0x80
mov eax,1
int 0x80
section .data
msg db ‘Hello, world!’, 0xa
len equ $ - msg
TLDR version: “get off my lawn you darn kids!”
The world needs more turbo encabulators.
Give it up, old-timer.