LUCID PAGES		INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
Intelligence		Notice: The following ideas are based on the eBook THE HUMAN MIND by Martin Dak and deal with the expression of deficient emotional intelligence in business. You should first read the page Intelligence to learn what intelligence is. Since you may not like the below presented information, you agree that you shall defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the author and the publisher against any and all claims, losses, expenses, and lawsuits that may arise from this visit. Leave now or read at your risk. SOCIOECONOMIC RELATIONSHIPS From the manufacturer's viewpoint, all products need to be designed, manufactured, promoted, and sold. Marketing people try to find out what the customer wants, and report the findings to the people in product development. Designers then propose ways of meeting the need. At this time, sales people begin promotional campaigns to inform the public that a product is going to be available soon. The final engineering design is then transferred to manufacturing, and finished products are channeled to potential customers through the appropriate distribution channels. This is how demand and offer work in theory. In real life, the mysterious variable of human psychopathology enters the economic relationship. In one scenario, a manufacturer makes an outstanding product, but the public does not want it, because the taste of the public is not in tune with the offer. At other times, some customers want to buy a real bread, but commercial American bakeries keep making the same old junk they were baking 50 years ago. Naturally, bakeries make junk bread because people buy it. Call it psychopathology or tradition, the consumers and the producers are locked in a relationship that resists a change for the better. As another example, many people would like to buy small desktop computers, but the industry, with the exception of a few companies, keeps manufacturing big boxes with a lot of empty space inside. The discrepancies between what the market offers and what the consumer wants are particularly prominent in the field of photography, automotive industry, and computer industry. Although the product in these three categories differ, there are remarkable similarities in marketing, production, and customer needs. PRODUCERS It is no secret that manufacturers are in business to make money. The ancient enthusiasm of individual workshop owners and the pride in their products are over. Nowadays, high-tech industries are dominated by large corporations. Their bottom line is profit. The big companies care little about product quality, performance, reliability, appeal, desirability, customer satisfaction, or social need. The issue of making profit overrides any other considerations, and manufacturers are often willing to sell substandard products to make money. Even the most reputable manufacturers do not always give buyers an honest deal. Although blatant dishonesty of the past century has been replaced with marketing gimmicks, producers have found "honest" ways to legally extort an extra buck. As an example, manufacturers of color printers have implemented technical measures to prevent users from getting inexpensive inks from a third party. This strategy is very profitable because one set of ink cartridges can be more costly than the printer itself. Camera manufacturers use the same approach when designing power sources. Instead of allowing users to buy inexpensive AAA or AA cells, camera producers design their own batteries. The reason is not to make the battery fit the camera, but to make money. Few photographers dare to leave home without a backup battery. Buying a second battery is a predictable behavior. A proprietary battery typically costs between $40 and $60. Two regular AA rechargeable NiHM cells cost between $5 and $10. They can be plugged into a generic charger at home or in a car. Instead, camera buyers have to buy an expensive proprietary charger when purchasing a camera. Some producers can afford to commit this form of marketing extortion without penalties because their products are superior and are in demand. As long as customers are willing suckers, they will be paying the extra money for unnecessary proprietary technology. Another way to make profit is to sell poor quality. If a producer sells a product that has great usability, wonderful performance, and is reliable for 20 or 30 years, the producer does not make much money, even if the wonderful product is the most desirable in the world. Something has to be done to make people buy a product more often, preferably every year. The automotive industry figured out how to do this in the 1950's. An American family had to have a new car every 3 years to keep up with the Joneses. Exploiting the psychopathology of the masses, the automotive industry made handsome money. The camera industry does the same thing today by employing the following strategies: Cameras are made from cheap plastics in the hope that the products will break Cameras do not have the best possible performance, so that a customer can buy a slightly improved model that is just about to be released (next year). Cameras do not have the desirable performance built in, but the user can achieve the function or the quality by buying accessories, such as lenses, filters, or battery packs. Cameras that are very popular and last forever are discontinued. They are produced no more, and a substandard product replaces them. BUYERS The mentality of buyers is exquisitely manifested in photography. Cameras are used by millions of people around the world. Having the ability to record one's experiences is very important to all humans. Almost every family living in a rich country has some kind of a camera. How we record, value, and interpret images influences development of photographic equipment. Both users and manufacturers have major impact on new products. Oftentimes, the desires of users dominate, and manufacturers produce cameras of low quality or poor usability simply because the users want such products in exchange for low cost. To understand the influence of buyers on product development, it is important to learn who buyers are. They fall in distinct groups: Snappers Snappers represent the majority of all people and camera users. Snappers just take pictures with no regard for composition, quality, or purpose of the captured images. A family gathers, and everyone snaps pictures. Family travels outside the city limits, and cameras are busy again. Family goes on a vacation, and snappers are having a party. They have poor artistic sense and predominantly take pictures of themselves. They love pictures that have bright and saturated colors with happy faces. This is what the camera industry is nurturing. The skies have to be bluer than blue, cheeks have to be bright red, grass has to be saturated green, clouds have to be snow-white, and everyone must be smiling. It is clear that snappers have no interest in photography; they want to see themselves. This psychological condition is a mild form of narcissism. Not surprisingly, snappers are self-centered and perceive themselves important. Geeks Geeks include freaks and nerds. These humanoids are attracted to products at the cutting edge of technology, cameras that have numerous functions and countless customizable options. The less usable and more complex the camera is, the more geeks love the device. The sheer challenge of lousy usability drives geeks to master the technology. Geeks do not want a camera, but a tool that extends their abilities and poses a mental challenge. The tool becomes an inseparable part of their mental selves. Hackers Hackers are essentially snappers with a drive to be like professional photographers. They do not mind spending money on equipment, but they use their expensive gadgets the same way as snappers do. Hackers have only superficial understanding of photographic techniques. Even worse, they have a twisted sense of beauty. Because of this mental deficit, hackers never become good photographers. They spend countless hours on their activities, but are incapable of getting rid of their crude values and methods. The problem is mental. Hobbyists Hobbyists love to experience the world through pictures and use them to trigger memories. To a hobbyist, taking a picture is a very emotional/spiritual matter. Similarly as geeks, hobbyists desire cameras that allow image manipulation. The motivation of hobbyists is vastly different, however. They want to capture scenes that best activate emotions and aesthetic responses. Simplicity and usability are important to hobbyists. They want to capture mood and not just a still copy of and object or scene. For these reasons, hobbyists must have an optical viewfinder of high quality. It serves as a window into and a connection with the visual world. A true hobbyist does not need an LCD to see the recorded picture instantly. On the other hand, hobbyists like to wait for the pictures. The hope and expectation that everything will come out just right is a strong motivator for hobbyists. Seeing the results instantly on a display would be like revealing to a reader of a detective story the identity of the murderer in the first chapter. Professionals Professionals are people who do photography for living. They can belong to any of the above groups. A prominent trait of professionals is that they take pictures for profit. Being able to immediately see the taken picture is of high importance to professionals. They want a big LCD screen with endless resolution and image quality. They do not mind carrying heavy equipment that guarantees technically advanced photographs. Many professionals have become lazy over the years and need a camera that is automatized as much as possible. This is why professionals often desire a large adjustable LCD on a swivel arm. DESIGN FACTORS Design of goods is perhaps the most important phase of industrial production. Design affects the desirability of the final product, the cost of manufacturing, usability, and benefit to a buyer. Design is where many influences compete. Manufacturing wants something that can be easy to produce. Marketing wants functions, features, and bigger marketability than the competitors offer. Engineers want performance and technological "elegance." Buyers often want something useful at a reasonable price. Corporate management wants profits, and particularly quick and big profits. Camera Industry Canon, as a leading camera producer, has enjoyed tremendous business success. Canon products are recognized as some of the best, and sales have been high for years. Surprisingly, not even Canon has escaped the effects of industrial psychopathology. One of Canon's very successful product of the year 2008 was the Canon Powershot A590 IS camera. It offers numerous features,  works with AA batteries, has an optical viewfinder, has manual and automatic operating modes, provides image stabilization, can capture both single shots and videos, has many customizable options, and yet, as a whole, this promising product is incredibly bad. This fact makes little difference now. The camera has been removed from stores to make place for new models. Naturally, all the promised accessories have disappeared along with the camera. There are still some businesses that offer the camera on the internet, but finding the camera in retail stores will be difficult after June 2009. Nevertheless, the camera has offered a valuable lesson about economics, industrial design, and emotional intelligence.   There is a saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. Similarly, the broth can be spoiled by too many first-class ingredients. This is the case of the Canon PS A590 IS. In addition to wanting to do too much and satisfy every possible user at the cost of quality, the manufacturer made a series of bad design decisions. Almost every review complains about the tripod mount. The mount is made from plastic and has been moved to one side of the camera. Similarly, every other review criticizes the placement of a play/shoot button on the camera. The function of this button could have been incorporated into the LCD menu. In summary, The menus are overwhelming; the controls are tiny, and usability is substandard. There are too many unnecessary functions, such as an extra battery just to keep time. The battery compartment has a schizophrenic way to close the cover: push button while pulling the lid. The camera is too small to hold comfortably.  The manufacturer has poor philosophy regarding the target customer. Design is inconsistent and uses the same control button for different functions. The implementation of the camera indicates that making a bad product is not a matter of technology, but bad human decisions. Any major camera producer has the ability to make a good product and can grab the leading position in the camera world if the product is properly implemented as a whole. The Automobile Industry Many problems in the camera business can also be seen in the automotive industry.  Controls are numerous, overwhelming, of poor quality, and manifest bad human engineering. Parts are too complex and modular, which requires costly replacement, instead of changing one small component. There are too many unnecessary functions and automatic controls. Accessibility is poor. Service and repairs are time consuming and costly. Many cars do not fit human dimensions.  Too many plastics are a health hazard, and they break over time. Aesthetics and efficiency suffer. Every manufacturer uses unique parts (bolts, nuts, lights, tires, wheels, horns) which makes repairs difficult. A serious problem of car manufacturers is lack of responsiveness to the needs of the market. With gas prices around 4 dollars, unemployment, low wages of the still employed, and low buying power of the public, the market needs an affordable basic transportation. While the majority of car makers are offering  luxury cars and see their sales decline, economical cars made by Hyundai are selling like hot cakes. The cars have just average mpg and cost only about $2000 less than other subcompact vehicles do. But even this improvement is highly desirable. One can only imagine the success with a car that has bare essentials, sells for under $10,000, and makes 50 mpg. Most producers still have not figured out that successful cars of the future must be inexpensive to buy and economical to operate. All other considerations, such as power steering, power windows, air conditioning, 400W stereo, and similar perks are beyond the means of the contemporary impoverished driver. One of the biggest problems in the automotive industry involves sales. Virtually all car makers sell cars to independent dealerships. And it is no secret that car dealers have a reputation that is only surpassed by lawyers and politicians. If a car maker sold cars through factory outlets and were completely honest about pricing, extended warranty, and related issues, the car maker would attract millions of additional customers. Instead, customers are left at the mercy of thoroughly crooked swindlers. Honest dealing by the manufacturer would create devoted car buyers because of simplified purchasing that would be open and fair. The excessive dealer's profit would be eliminated, and the customer could buy the same product at a significantly lower price. The advantages of this business model are obvious. Companies that have direct factory outlets in the retail business are making it in the current economy, while regular retailers struggle to survive. Most importantly, by selling directly to customers, the car maker would have access to customers and could respond to their needs and concerns during the development of the next car. This feedback is seriously diluted when direct contact with the customer is missing. The Computer Industry Naturally, the computer industry is no different than other high-tech manufacturers.  Computer menus are often overwhelming and have poor user interface. Some controls (CD bay, start button) are dangerous to use because the customer can cut himself or can break his nail. Parts are too complex and modular, which requires costly replacement, instead of changing one small component. There are too many unnecessary functions and automatic controls, particularly on keyboards. Accessibility of internal parts is poor. Service and repairs are time consuming and costly. Many computers are big boxes sold at big prices, even though the boxes are 80% empty.  Fan noise is one of the worst problems when it comes to human engineering. The solutions for fanless CPUs are surprisingly simple, especially when the computer is only used as a typewriter or occasional web browser. Computer books are fanless and work well. Why no one offers the same conceptual implementation in desktop computers is absolutely baffling. The market is there, but manufacturers apparently do not care.  Another problem is a lack of solid-state hard disks. We can build an 8GB (solid-state) pocket device to play music, but are unable to do the same in a computer. No manufacturer seems to offer a computer with a communication device for internet access that is physically isolated from the main computer. Such a device could be used for viewing, printing, or limited external storage, while completely bypassing the main computer. This approach would eliminate problems with viruses, spy cookies, and similar harmful data. The customer's communication device would be read only, and almost no possibility of a problem would exist. In the worst case, the user would cycle power and restore full function to the communication device. The chassis is often not usable in new releases of the operating systems, and a whole new computer needs to be bought. The Software Industry The software industry offers some of the best examples of psychopathology with plenty of evidence that being stupid and concurrently crooked comes with the territory. Most software giants started with the goal of becoming successful. By the time they achieved market dominance and the status of monopolies, they were drowning in cash. They did not dramatically reduce the cost of software to make their products more affordable. They have continued charging outrageous prices while giving away billions of dollars to charities and various foundations. A common expression of pathology in the software industry is EULA (End-User License Agreement), in which producers specify how the software may be used. Many producers prohibit the use of the original software if any kind of product improvement has been made. Let's say that the original software has a bug and does not work correctly. The producer may allow the users to upgrade the software with a fix. If the user's computer crashes and stops working, he is not allowed to buy a new computer and install the original software on it. Through this helpful form of extortion, the software producer forces the user to buy the latest and usually more expensive software. Another trick software companies employ is functional incompatibility. The latest and greatest operating system is not compatible with older software products. The user is forced to buy the latest compatible software version of an application program and spend money unnecessarily. One of the most prevalent expressions of pathology is useless complexity. Software products are unnecessarily more cluttered and with high demands on memory. The Windows operating system is a shining example of this approach. Windows originated as a Disk Operating System (DOS). Microsoft used this platform and built the Windows environment on top of the old system. This monstrous concoction of spaghetti code and nonexistent security has been criticized in countless internet forums. Anyhow, Microsoft managed to release Windows 95. It was a very good product with remarkably thought-out user interface to compete with and crush the user-friendly MacIntosh computers. Microsoft succeeded. Then came a few mediocre Windows versions before Microsoft developed Windows XP. It was a great hit. The trouble was that Windows XP had a different environment and different icons. Everything seemed to be slanting. The old rectangular icons of Windows 95, which were easy to view, were replaced by an expression of stupidity. If not for the ability of Windows XP to simulate the Windows 95 environment, the product might have been a disaster. A few years later, the same scenario is being repeated. Windows 7 offers a compatibility mode with Windows XP because many older application programs will not run on Windows 7. As usual, the icons in Windows 7 are different and more cluttered than the well thought-out icons of Windows 95. Windows 7 with 64-bit words seems like an improvement of the older 32-bit operating systems, but one has to wonder if there is any benefit. The 64-bit system needs more memory, hardware, and is more costly. The 32-bit system was fully adequate for 95% of users. It seems that computer geeks, who represent some 5% of all users, are responsible for the "useless progress." Another frequent problem in software development is downgrading of performance. The simple Paint, coming with Windows as a free application program, was very good in Windows 95 and Windows XP. By contrast, the tools pallet in Windows 7 is a cluttered disaster. Some very useful functions, such as pasting of images in the transparent mode, were removed. Zooming is now possible in increments of 100%, but the implementation is poor. Instead of displaying all the available ZOOM values and activating the desired value at one click, the user has to keep clicking until the correct value is found. And the default colors have become less appealing. Similarly as in the older versions, the user-defined colors cannot be stored with the image. Annotation is now possible at any ZOOM setting, but the letters have lost their quality. There is a rainbow of colors in each letter even when the black color is selected. And, of course, a poor product would not be complete without dozens of useless font styles. Making downgraded products is not enough for Microsoft, Now the company spies on software users, on their habits and practices, meddles with the users' computers, deletes their files, and otherwise invades the users' privacy through mandatory software registration and automatic upgrades that transfer control over many aspects of the computer to Microsoft. Also other software developers have accepted the Microsoft business model and are selling "Trojan Horses" to naive users. Only after a customer buys a computer with Microsoft software, he or she may learn the full extent of the entrapment. Most customers never learn because they do not read every single EULA coming with every upgrade and do not understand the legal meaning anyway. CONCLUSION Many manufacturers have failed in market research, user interface, and human engineering. The reasons for the deficits are not technical, but purely mental. The above mentioned examples manifest that lack of emotional intelligence is a serious problem among manufacturers, and little can be done about it. Welcome to the planet earth.
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Updated Sep 1, 2011		Unpublished work © 2000-2011 Lucid Pages. All rights reserved.