There is an interesting question. Why do highly intelligent people sometimes do stupid things? Perhaps the question should be rewritten. Why do highly intelligent people do things that turn out to be stupid in hindsight? The new phrasing of the question implies that, when the thing is done, it does not seem to be stupid, but only becomes that later.
ITEM 1
I believe that 3M pioneered the production of overhead projectors. Those who have been to my seminars know that I use such projectors a great deal. It seems to me that each new model from 3M gets progressively worse. A recent model has the on/off switch just under where the lecturer rests his hand between writing on the projector. The result? The projector keeps getting switched off.
In earlier models the attachment for rolls of acetate would allow the flow of acetate from side-to-side or from back-to-front. The back-to-front use is far more efficient. You can add items to the bottom of a list. You use far less acetate. With side-to-side flow, you have to move on ten inches to clear the screen. With back-to-front you only need to move two inches. The 'improvement' makes it impossible to use back-to-front rolls on the newer model.
ITEM 2
Recently I flew Canadian Airlines from Toronto to Tokyo and again from Taipei to Vancouver. At unforeseen times my foot-rest kept coming up or the back of my seat kept going down. What was happening on these brand-new seats? The controls for the foot-rest and seat back are on the arm-rest. So if you rest your elbow on the arm-rest (which is what this rest is for) you inadvertently activate the controls.
ITEM 3
Imagine a rather narrow shower room. At the end, opposite the entrance, is the shower facing you. The controls of the shower are directly beneath the shower. The controls are the ones where you turn a knob from zero at one end to very hot at the other (not a pre-set control). So you have to stand directly in front of the shower to turn it on. It is freezing at first and scalding later. You have no choice but to stand in the shower in order to adjust the temperature.
These are but three examples of astonishingly bad design. How could they possibly come about?
THRUST
In the case of the 3M projector, I suspect that the designer wanted to get away from the usual box shape to make it more aesthetically pleasing. This did produce a nicer, rounded shape. But now there was no place to fit the roller attachment. Since the designer had probably never used an OHP, this would not have seemed very significant to him or her. And since the production people reckoned the designers knew what they were doing, no one checked the actual use of the machine.
So the 'thrust' towards a more aesthetic design pushed any other considerations out of the way. This thrust was followed. Only later, when the aesthetic design had been achieved, was there an attempt to add on the necessary features.
FAULT CORRECTION
It is perfectly true that in most OHPs the controls are very awkwardly hidden away on the front of the machine. This means that you have to stoop down to switch the machine on and off. Why not correct this obvious fault by having the on/off switch sitting right on top of the machine? What better place than to have the switch than in the corner nearest to the lecturer?
So the fault correction placed the switch in exactly the position where it would unintentionally be switched off by the resting hand of the lecturer. The same thing happened with the airline seat. The controls are normally hidden away on the side of the arm-rest and are indeed difficult to find. So making them clearly visible on top of the arm-rest seems an obvious solution. But the mind-set of correcting the fault introduced a different fault. The controls would now be unintentionally activated.
NORMAL PROCEDURE
It is normal procedure to place the shower controls directly under the shower. This makes the plumbing much simpler. If the shower is placed over a bath, then you can stand to the side and adjust the shower temperature without getting wet. But when this 'normal procedure' is applied to a narrow room, where you cannot stand aside but face the shower head, it becomes highly inconvenient.
In hindsight it is easy to see how all these faults came about. No one was being stupid at any one moment. But the overall results were very stupid.
DESIGN DIRECTION
Theoretically there are at least two different approaches to design. In one approach you seek to keep all factors in mind as you proceed with the design. In practice this is extremely difficult to do. In the other approach you take one major thrust and work in that direction. You then proceed to make changes and adjustments to bring in the other needed factors. This is much more practical, but sometimes the adjustments are not easy.
BLACK HAT
At the end of the design process, and at various stages along the way, it would be normal to apply the 'caution' of the critical Black Hat (from the Six Hats thinking method). The weaknesses of the design would be focused upon. Even so, the Black Hat is not often sufficient. Criticism only works from one frame or point of view. Criticism might have picked up the design fault in the airline seat and even in the shower controls, but not in the OHP problem, because, for normal users of the OHP, there was no problem. A wider view of other users would have been necessary to uncover the problem. Criticism within one frame, no matter how fierce and penetrating, does not itself change the frame.
CAF
This stands for Consider All Factors. This is an 'attention-directing tool' which invites the thinker to look around and to consider all the factors that need to be considered. The tool is in fact the second lesson of the CoRT Thinking programme for schools (currently being adapted for business use).
Before commencing a design, the designer would do a CAF. He or she would explore all relevant factors - or as many as could be conceived. At subsequent stages in the design, further CAF operations would be done. This would mean that at every moment these factors were being kept in mind, even if they were not part of the 'design thrust'. When the design was almost completed, a very thorough CAF would be done. This would include visualising the user at every moment.
Doing a CAF in this way is much more effective at picking up faults than straight criticism or Black Hat scrutiny. This is because ordinary criticism starts from an implicit and unobserved frame. With CAF the thinking effort is focused on finding and defining different frames. Ordinary criticism is focused on internal faults (will this work, is it safe, etc.) and on standard use (will this do what it should do). CAF is focused immediately on external factors, different situations, different users, possibilities, etc. Once these have been put in mind, then criticism can make its judgments against this much wider selection of frames.
BROAD THINKING
The human mind does not have a natural habit of broad thinking. The mind likes to focus and to pursue one line of thinking. This is especially so when standard patterns are available (as in the shower example). There is a real need for attention-directing frameworks. The Six Hats method provides some broad attention-directing frameworks. The CoRT Lessons (and their recent adaptation to business) suggest some more detailed attention-directing tools.
As so often, the difficulty in thinking is to manage a balance between the broad and the narrow. Being too broad at every stage may be fine for awareness and exploration, but any sort of design or action needs a narrower thrust. It is simple enough to say 'avoid mistakes' or 'correct faults', but this is often not much more use than saying 'find it' when something is lost. We need to know where to look and how to look. The general intention is not enough.
No doubt, in all the items listed, the designers felt that they were competent and doing a good job. This is part of the general complacency in thinking. Most people consider that their thinking is pretty good and does not require improvement. They know their field, have experience and are logical. Is that not enough?
BETTER THINKING
If you are confused, you know that you need better thinking. If you do not know what to do next, then you know that you need better thinking. If you cannot solve a problem or get around some obstacle, then you know that you need better thinking. But when none of the above apply and when you think you are doing very well - that is when you are in danger of complacency.
So the reason that intelligent people sometimes do things which turn out to be stupid is that they are not conscious of that possibility at the time. Their thinking has been too narrow. But they are never aware of this narrowness. How can you see what you are not aware is there to look at?
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