We've been having some problems with our DSL service at Chateau Steelypips again, which has gotten me thinking about the design of devices that are annoying to use. It occurs to me that you might use a sort of control to indicator ratio as a measure of how irritating a device is to use.
This is prompted by the fact that our home network contains two devices, a DSL modem and a wireless router, each of which has four indicator LED's on the front. These LED's have a couple of different states each-- when either devices is functioning properly, they're steady green, but they can also blink, and light up in different colors. Presumably, different failure modes are distinguishable by which lights are lit, and which are blinking, and so on.
Each device also boasts only one control: a power switch. That's it. I have no real idea what the different blinking lights mean, because it really doesn't matter. Regardless of how the device has failed, there's only one action you can take: you can turn it off, and turn it back on, and hope for the best.
This is, of course, ridiculously frustrating from a user standpoint. There's no point in having the ability to distinguish between 81 different states of the device (four lights, each eith on, off, or blinking) if there's only one thing you can do in response. It's not like I can say "Ah, the third light from the left is out, that means that I need to renooberate the frobulator..." and do that. Whichever light is blinking, the only thing I can do is turn the modem off, and turn it back on.
Hence, the idea of the control-to-indicator ratio as a measure of the annoyingness of a device. The ideal value would be close to 1-- not necessarily having each indicator adjusted by a single control, but having multiple actions possible for the user to get the indicators into the right alignment would be helpful. The control-to-indicator ratio of 1:4 (C/I = 0.25), for our DSL modem is Not Good.
Of course, being far from one in the other direction isn't good. A device with four knobs and only one indicator light (C/I = 4) isn't going to be any fun to use, either-- you'd have a great deal of freedom to make adjustments, but you'd be flying blind most of the time. So maybe we need some more complicated formula, to measure the deviation from one in either direction...
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This probably won't help you, but it is at least worth pointing out that most of these devices are quite configurable and can be accessed via 192.168.0.1 (or something similar). In fact, I've found these software interfaces quite useful at times.
The router and the DSL modem probably have different C/I ratios if you count the web interface to your router (if it is anything like the one we have).
Also, of course, the indicators aren't really for you, even though they are discussed in the owner's manual (which no owner ever reads -- you don't need a manual to own something, just money to buy it!). The indicators are for the tech support guy if you ever get to the point of calling for help because power-cycling didn't work.
That being said, there is no excuse for hard and/or frustrating devices. Agreed. I would say, though, that it's not the number of indicators that is the problem. It's the fact that they are blinky/colored/solid lights whose meaning you have to memorize to make sense of. A little display that gave, in language that you can understand, what the problem is, or what's needed to fix it, would make the damn thing much less frustrating. Then, maybe you would know whether power-cycling will help or whether you need to call Verizon and have them do something on their end.
If you take the term 'control' very loosely, the modem infact as 3 controls (power switch, phone cable, cat5 cable) and from the lights it is possible to infer if one of the cables is unplugged.
The indicators don't just diagnose the state of the device, they also help you diagnose something about the state of the connection and your network. They are not fabulously usefil, perhaps, but they're not useless, either.
Also, as April points out, you can configure most routers.
Cox Cable with its "weak signal" and Blue Screen of No TV incidents is also creative with throttling Internet download speeds and connecting to nothing. Those who fork over monthly cumshaw often refer to themselves as "Cox suckers."
Cox is the local quality provider. The competition is astoundingly incompetent. Then we have the bad old days.
yes, yes, a thousand times yes. We have the same set-up at our pad, and we went through a nasty period some months back when it was nigh impossible to figure out what was holding it up. I think someone must have sacrificed a goat on our behalf or something, whereupon it started working again.
To second "A"'s comment, try typing one of these addresses into your browser - you should see lots of options for your router.
http://192.168.0.1/
http://192.168.1.1/
I hate to sound terribly flippant (and since this happened some time ago I am fairly confident you shoud be able to laugh about this) about this but have you read the book. Understandable you may not be used to receiving an instruction manual, you are in the business of, you could say, writing one for the universe as it seems our copy has been lost.
In the event you do not have a manual there is another possibility. The "Internets", it is a marvelous place where by going to a place called "Google" (replace with search engine of your choice) you can search for say the homepage of the manufacturer of the router and even the DSL modem and perhaps download the manual.
Admittedly I know the world of universitys and colleges seriously frown up the use of their internet access for anything other than work. Especially by students who may downlad things like music .
For those who may wonder why this sounds so acidic please take note, I've handled Technical Support issues for people who believe the power switch should fix all problems, and if it doesn't it is automatically my fault. Sometimes it is, most times it is not.
As more blogs were posted after this one I wil lassume of course that it was fixed. And am very glad to I find your blog quite interesting.