Product Manual Report Card

The good, the bad and the “How come they didn’t think of this…”

Flip Ultra.

Great product. Skimpy manual.

July 21, 2009 in Appliances and Household Gadgets, Product Manual Report Card, Rant & Rave, Silicon Valley | 2 comments

tiny-flip-manual-hand-blue-bkgThis is what happens when the product manual is written by people who know the product too well.

Indeed, flip does do a lot of things right in their manual. They load it up with illustrations, avoid technical terms and create a layout that leaves little doubt as to what copy is talking about what process. Still, they practice the cardinal sin of  assuming people can fill in the blanks. For example: Read the rest of this entry »

Bunn GRX Home Brewer:

Countering the counterintuitive

July 14, 2009 in Appliances and Household Gadgets, Product Manual Report Card | 1 comment

Potential Coffee Tsunami.

People who approach this machine without knowing how it works (such as some of my house-guests) are likely to create a mess that seeps into kitchen crevices you never knew existed. Or they may (as people who bought it on my avid recommendation) end up convinced that “the damn thing doesn’t work.”

What’s needed here is more show, less tell. For example :

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

Read the rest of this entry »

iPhone Bluetooth Headset:

Apple flunks Driver’s Ed

July 12, 2009 in Product Manual Report Card, Silicon Valley | 2 comments

What you don’t know can kill you.

Apple, a company on the cutting edge of video instruction, could have made this product a lot safer to use by, instead of burying the usual lawyerly gobbledygook, providing a practical short video. I propose the following:

Read the rest of this entry »

GE Super Plus Capacity Washer:

Have these people ever done the laundry?

July 10, 2009 in Appliances and Household Gadgets, Product Manual Report Card | No comments

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Seeing the instructions on their machine, one wonders.

At least, unlike Maytag (which quit doing it), GE  has the sense to include “How to do your Laundry” instructions right where nobody can miss them. But they’re the wrong instructions. Read the rest of this entry »

The Missing Instructions on Egg Cartons

July 6, 2009 in Edibles, Product Manual Report Card | 4 comments

eggspirationIt ain’t necessarily so.

More and more egg companies are stamping an expiration on their cartons. As a result, more and more perfectly fresh eggs are getting thrown away.  One obvious solution is for the egg companies to offer up this simple test that anyone can do. Read the rest of this entry »

Ugg Spray

July 5, 2009 in Non Edible Packaged Goods, Product Manual Report Card | 2 comments

uggdirty-boot-spray

Shouldn’t Ugg® be doing this?

It’s like buying a new car and then being told you have to apply your own rustproofing it before you can drive it.

Read the rest of this entry »

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