A cause of fatal mining accidents was once the peculiar configuration

A cause of fatal mining accidents was once the peculiar configuration of the controls on the trams shuttling along mineshafts. Each tram had a steering wheel that rose straight up from the floor, with a brake pedal on one side and an accelerator pedal on the other. There was no room to turn the tram around, so to reverse direction the driver simply took a seat on the other side of the steering wheel, whereupon what had been the brake became the accelerator, and vice versa. While this may sound
ingenious, it proved disastrous.

Many people set an electric burner on high thinking that it will heat up faster that way: they have the mental model of a gas stove, whose knobs actually do increase the heat‘s intensity. On an electric stove, however, the knob is merely a switch that turns on the burner and then turns it off
when a certain temperature is reached.

Consider the humble wristwatch, which has been transformed into a kind of wrist-mounted personal computer, with a digital display and a calculator pad whose buttons are too small to be pressed by a human fingertip. By replacing the watch‘s conventional stem-winding mechanism with a mystifying arrangement of tiny buttons, the manufacturers created a watch that was hard to reset.

One leading manufacturer was distressed to discover that a line of its particularly advanced digitals was being returned as defective by the thousands, even though the watches actually worked perfectly well. Further investigation revealed that they were coming back soon after purchase and thereafter in two large batches—in the spring and the fall, when the time changed.

Charles Mauro, a consultant in New York City, is a prominent member of a branch of engineering generally known as ergonomics, or human- factors—the only field specifically addressing the question of product usability. Mauro was brought in to provide some help to the watch manufacturer, which was experiencing what Mauro calls the "complexity problem." With complexity defined as a fundamental mismatch between the demands of a technology and the capabilities of its user, the term nicely captures the essence of our current technological predicament.

A growing number of technologists speak of user-centred design as a means of scrupulously maintaining the user‘s perspective from start to finish, adding technology only where necessary. When confronted by some mystifying piece of high-tech gadgetry, consumers naturally feel that there is something wrong with them if they can‘t figure it out. In truth it is usually not their fault. Mauro attributes the confusion to the fact that most products are "technology-driven," their nature determined not by consumers and their needs and desires but by engineers who are too often entranced with the myriad capabilities of the microprocessors that lie at the devices‘ hearts

1. Based on the passage, an ergonomics expert would be likely to place high value on a product that:

A. required no instruction at all to use.
B. did not incorporate modern technology.
C. could be easily manipulated by hand.
D. solved complex problems for its user.
E. required elaborate instructions for proper usage


2. When consumers feel that there is something wrong with them if they can‘t figure a high-tech gadget out, which of the following assumptions are they making?

A. The gadget was designed for ready use by the average consumer.
B. Technology can only be understood by engineer-types.
C. The gadget designers were blind to the consumers‘ needs.
D. Everyone is equally capable of understanding new technology.
E. they are not as intelligent as the other person


3. According to one consumer survey, a third of all VCR owners have given up trying to program their machines for time-delayed viewing. How would the author probably explain this fact?

A. VCR owners have not yet found the correct mental model by which to interpret the VCR.
B. Those owners have concluded that the VCR was not well designed.
C. Those trying to program the machine are not as technologically savvy as they should be.
D. The VCR is the result of technology-driven rather than user-centred design.
E. The author would view this as an aberration