Science
Technumaniacal failure
Bernard Dixon I'm happy using a credit card td buy petrol and settle restaurant bills, but not to purchase a packet of Rawlplugs, a Scotch, or the evening paper. So it was that, finding myself short of ready cash one Saturday
some time ago, I sought succour in the whirring entrails of my local Barclaycash machine. Keying-in my 'personal number' I inserted a £10 voucher, closed the highly impressive, slab-like drawer, and waited. There was the usual buzzing sound, but nothing more. I stood, but the machine did not deliver. Thwarted of ten crisp, pound notes,I couldn't retrieve my voucher either. The drawer remained firmly closed, and then, just as I turned away angrily, the familiar 'out of action' lettering on the screen lit up, with mocking clarity.
Weeks later, I discovered that the bank had debited £10 from my current account. Only after a slightly unpleasant exchange of letters did I convince the manager that I had not cheated, and persuade him to credit me with the missing sum.
I should not, of course, have felt angry or surprised over this episode. In my experience (which cannot be unique) Barclaycash machines are frequently out of action, to such an extent that their significance as sources of instant lucre is largely illusory. On a rough estimate over the past few months, my local machine has been out of commission about half of the time when I have wanted to use it. And on one of the two desperate occasions when I have been so frantic as to drive ten miles to the next nearest machine, I found that it too was broken — 50 per cent again.
Why such a dismal record? Clearly, these machines were brought into service before their reliability in realistic practical conditions was established. Doubtless the internal structure is of astounding ingenuity. Doubtless the designer is an exceedingly clever man. But all of this is irrelevant if the confounded engine simply won't operate dependably in real circumstances.
Barclaycash machines are, of' course, only one manifestation of this brand of technomaniacal failure. Cars are the prime example. I was one of the suckers who bought an Austin Maxi in 1969, shortly after this model first came on to the market. I liked the car's general specifications and its internal adaptability, which suited my varying needs. But soon after acquiring the vehicle, I realised my mistake. There were innumerable trivial faults, but more importantly the car was underpowered, rendering the so-called fifth gear virtually useless except down an incline on a motorway. The gearbox (described memorably in one road report as "like stirring a bucketful of nuts and bolts with a long, thin cane") was atrocious.
Despite all that, I am today the delighted owner of an Austin. Maxi — the Mark Two version which, when the time came to discard my appalling Mark One, I found to behave virtually like a different model altogether. Most of the worst faults have been righted, and the car is incomparably smoother and happier. Clearly, its parent vehicle should never have been marketed when it was.
Such is often the case. Despite all the usual blarney about rigorous road-testing — new models are supposed to have been taken millions of.miles across the Sahara and back, driven hard up
and down Everest, through scorching sun and blinding snowstorm, etc. — when a new car is launched it is invariably unready for public service. A year later, perhaps, after hundreds of thousands of complaints and failures, the manufacturer corrects. all the deficiencies which hel should have known about at the very beginning.
The moral behind such nonsense — which I am strongly tempted to see as a characteristically British failing — is that technologists and manufacturers should pay much more attention to the real conditions under which their products are used, to users' everyday requirements, and to practical reliability. Too often they are so dazzled by technical sophistication that hard practicality is neglected.
Two years ago, the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University' produced a report on its Project Sappho'. By compariing pairs of competing products — one commercially successful, the other unsuccessful — this report showed that qualities other than technical sophistication were crucial in fostering success. At the top of the list of factors distinguishing successful new products from failures was the following statement: "Successful innovating firms displayed a better grasp of users' needs. The less successful ones tended to. ignore user requirements and even users' views when they were offered."
British industry, it seems, has still to learn the simple, obvious lessons of this eminently sensible report.
Bernard Dixon is editor of New Scientist
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