Stuff That Smashes Impressively But Not Terminally

Part of the normal usage cycle for much technological product lines involves, for the large part, sitting there performing the task for which it was designed, and looking good while it does it. A small but neglected part of the usage lifecycle, especially where product design is concerned, is the failure episode. Often, but not always, this will occur almost at the end of the product's useful life, usually as the penultimate but one stage in the relationship between product and user.

What I would suggest, to all product designers is to integrate this hitherto ignored but almost predictable phase of operation into the structural design of the product.

When, as had happened to me this week, I was made three hours late by a laser printer that repeatedly did not print all the pages, I found myself required to engage in the second phase of ownership of the product, which is a considerably less passive state. The physical interaction generally involves rationally unplugging the unit in question, gripping it with ones hands and raising it high above oneself - a very intimate relationship of misbehaving product and expressive user. The culmination of this phase is to throw the unit with customary force against a 'ground' - this can often be the ground that immediately presents itself, but sometimes the ritual involves locating ground outside of the building, often with large altitudinal differential to the original engagement point. In some cases, defenestration is also required, and indeed, is a tremendous enhancement to this phase. However, in one's own home, the defenestration phase presents itself alongside a fairly swiftly progressing rationalisation flowchart of options, resulting in the election of skipping the defenestration phase if one owns the glass in question, or if ones wife will arrive home within the processes allotted time.

The reward involved in this entire intimate phase instigated by non-delivery of promised service on the part of the unit, is the very real and tangible satisfaction of seeing the misbehaving unit smash into as many pieces as possible. Increased sensations are stimulated as the visual recognition of inside parts of the unit that you never knew existed are revealed, along with plus marks on the score for physical state transitions of recognisable parts into new and original arrangements. The more evidence of state transition, the greater the reward.

In the case of my printer, this week, I had to repeat the exercise, as the first time didn't reap enough transitioned components. Increased velocity was clearly needed - I was obviously doing it wrong the first time (hardly surprising, as nowhere in the manual are there ever any details on how the user is supposed to engage in this particular phase of product ownership and participation). The second time, having calibrated my responses and actions from the first one, were suitably rewarding. Pieces of plastic and paper everywhere, in a most creative and expressive arrangement.

However, after leaving the house for several hours and returning, the realisation that there's no possible way of affording a replacement for this much depended-upon item of utility dawned. The only solution would be to reassemble the unit. This I managed to do (in the same way that our Dyson vacuum cleaner now shows evidence of reassembly and structural warping effects) and the printer now works as badly as it ever does (it seems likely that it was a software fault after all, but software doesn't offer this bonus phase in user-interaction at all - a huge and fundamental disadvantage in my opinion) but the extra supply of broken plastic clips, screw bushings and housings, fractured plastic edges and split and damaged moulding interfaces merely acts as a reward trophy for this unit. In other words, this unit has the potential to offer this interaction phase over and over.

It occurred to me, that products should be designed to offer this phase of ownership, on a repeated basis. Instead of the one time it goes too far, being the terminal act it instigates, it should be just one of many 'lesson teaching' episodes. Equipment would be respected and integrated into the ownership process to a greater degree if it lived to be put back together with battle scars, each time it required teaching a lesson.

What I'm suggesting is that this phase of product interaction be intentionally designed in to the product design stage - the fixings, plastic mouldings, cases, shells, struts and structures should all be designed to a] smash into as many impressive pieces as possible, and then b] allow full reintegration and reassembly in the case of a mistaken engagement. Design stuff that can be smashed into as many pieces, most impressively, then allow full reassembly and continued function.