Good Question

Why Are Things So Complicated?

DENVER (CBS4) ― It used to be you got the television working by pulling a knob, flicking a switch, or later, by pressing, "On," on a remote that your mother feared would set the curtains ablaze if you pointed it that way. Today it can take minutes to figure out not only how to turn the television on, but to engage the satellite or cable to activate and then select the correct component and actually get a picture with sound.

"I've fidgeted with this for more than twenty minutes trying to make the blasted thing light up," a neighbor told me as we tried to watch a football game.

"I wouldn't say that it's necessarily complicated, I would say that they're adding more and more features," said Robb Ogden, general manager of the Ultimate Electronics store in Thornton.

Before you get mad at him, let me say he wasn't boasting, only being honest, when I asked if he read the directions and he replied, "Ahh, we don't need to." We laughed. His was a laugh of confidence; mine was the nervous laughter of a person trying to sound like I got it all too. But I don't. And I'm not the least technically capable person at CBS4. People have actually asked me for help in resolving glitches with their computers. (Generally things got worse for them after I was involved, but they seemed to want to believe what I was saying - and who am I to deprive them of advice?)

Ogden said indeed there are some who ask for the simple products. But there are some who are, "Early adopters." Those are the people who show up at the door shortly after some new technology has hit the market.

"I don't know if it makes me mad, it frustrates me," said one man we talked with. He said he relies on his son.

Do the companies that make it know you find it difficult? "Oh, I think they get it," said University of Colorado at Denver professor of marketing Cliff Young. He pointed out that the people who are daunted by technology don't buy nearly as many products and manufacturers remain aware of the frustrations of others only to a limited degree. "Probably only to the standpoint where they know, yes, there's a large market out there that is frustrated by all the complexity, but they don't buy our product anyway."

Adding features allows marketers to look like they're updating their products. It's hard to remove advancements because a few customers latch onto them. It's the perception of value says Young.

"Most of the features now are software features, programming features. You're not having to re-define the entire cell phone from scratch. And so by adding those features the incremental cost is not that much. The incremental value is high. The ability to sell it as a new product comes out as soon as they add a new feature," Young said.

Washing machines are a great example. Many used to have a big dial and some selections for hot, warm cold and two cycle selections. Pull out the knob and the washing machine goes. Not anymore. Now there are many controls created with electronic sensor strips. "The analog dial controls are much more expensive because that's a hardware, that's a hardware piece."

So the perception of new comes from constant change. It's cheap to add software or electronic controls, so those are added. Robb Ogden said there are a lot of features packed into many products to keep product lines less complicated for manufacturers.

"Absolutely, and then that way they can have fewer models because if you made a different model for every single different feature that somebody might be looking for, then it's too difficult to mass produce that many different things," Ogden said.

So, that may be simpler for the people who make them, but more complicated for you. Unless you're young enough to get it with your eyes closed as one teenager told us. "If you're older I can understand how it would be harder."

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