Bad Design Hell

Publié le Catégorisé dans Geekiness, User Interface Design

I’m back in the Playground of the Baby Giants this August, this time, with my new MacBook in tow.

We decided to buy and install a wireless router at my parents’ so we could work untethered. We drove down to the nearest Staples, and ended up choosing a Linksys model, the best selling WRT54G.

Brought it home, ran the butt-ugly installation wizard on my parents’ desktop PC, followed the instructions to connect it to the cable modem, and got to screen #8, which prompted us for a password. That’s all it said: « Password ». There was no paper documentation besides a small flyer with a basic FAQ, in which a password is mentioned to access the router from a browser.

So we plugged in that password, but the dialog box just kept popping up again. What followed were 2 days of infuriating phone calls to Verizon and Linksys support. On the first day, I did most of the calling, and the Linksys did work briefly, as long as no security was enabled on it. Every person we talked to from Verizon and Linksys took a shot at making it work, in vain. I literally blew my top at the end of the first day, especially when I tried to adjust the earpiece of Pamela’s mobile phone, only to press on a hang-up button « conveniently » placed in the only location on the earpiece you are likely to grab.

BAD DESIGN HELL!!!

It was then decided (by popular demand) that I would no longer be involved. So Pamela went through the same ordeal on the next day, still to no avail.

We finally returned the Linksys and got a Netgear unit (the WGT624). While I was out at the beach with the kids, Pamela installed it in 20 minutes. The installation wizard was well designed, and worked flawlessly on the first try. The Netgear hardware is much nicer too, stylish and compact. And it is considerably cheaper than the Linksys model.

It is not impossible that the Linksys unit we got was defective, but based on everything else (the boneheaded installation wizard, ugly design, and willing but ultimately uselsess support), I can only recommend avoiding Linksys at all costs!!!

It truly boggles my mind that so many bad products (or at the very least, badly designed products) have such commanding market share. People are masochists, or don’t realize they don’t have to tolerate bad design.

But the nightmare is behind us, and it is a pleasure to be blogging on my MacBook in the back yard.