August 17, 1998

Don't let technology get in the way of basic design

Bill Schweber, Technical Editor

Hasbro Inc recently purchased the rights to update and resell the classic Atari video games of the early 1980s--including Pong, Missile Command, and Centipede--for new platforms, such as CD-ROM, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo N64. Certainly, the company is attempting to make money by appealing to those of us who grew up with these games and remember them fondly.

But there's more to the story than just Hasbro's blind hope that it can turn basic nostalgia and brand-name revival into a big business, as so many other consumer-product and media entities have tried through the recent release of movies such as "The Flintstones" and "The Brady Bunch" or by bringing back foods that were popular during our childhood. Many of the people purchasing these revivals weren't even born when these games had their boom. Hasbro based its decision on this simple fact: Its reissue of Atari's Frogger for CD-ROM and Sony Playstation sold 900,000 copies, making it the sixth best-selling game among the approximately 2000 games on the market in December 1997.

The reality is that these games were successful because they concentrated on the basics and did a very good job of it. Instead of relying on high-power CPUs and graphics to lay on an excess of features, the games of the 1980s concentrated on only a few important characteristics: concept, simplicity, and action. In place of lavish and detailed scenes permeated with incredible complexity of concept and play, these games were focused. You didn't need to read a complex manual, subscribe to online help groups, or worry that some subtle feature would get in the way of basic functions. Tom Dusenberry, president of Hasbro's Interactive Division, sums it up nicely: "The technology was so limited back then you had to have great games for them to be interesting."

Today's designers face the complexity challenge every day, and it's getting worse. More powerful software, combined with more powerful hardware, lets you create impressive systems, but this impressiveness comes at the price of user-friendliness, needless complexity, and overwhelming features. Do your customers prefer lean, well-executed designs that do a job well, don't do too much else, and are almost intuitive to use? I think many do. Consider the fax machine, for example. A basic fax machine is almost as easy to use as a phone or TV, is transparent to the format of the message inscribed on the paper, and rarely gives inexplicable trouble to the user. Compare sending a fax with the challenge of setting up a PC and using it to generate a simple memo. (And don't forget the aggravation of upgrades.)

Make sure you are driven by what users want, not just by what you can do. Restrain your enthusiasm for the design complexity that today's systems so easily achieve, and create a design that meets the real needs of the user.

You can reach Technical Editor Bill Schweber at 1-617-558-4484, fax 1-617-558-4470, bill.schweber@cahners.com.

Editorial Taoism

Brian Dipert, Technical Editor

The symbol to the right may be familiar to many of you, but you may not be familiar with what it means. Known as the yin and yang, its white and black colors can respectively represent good and evil; heaven and earth; stillness and motion; flexibility and firmness; or any two concepts that the Western world sees as opposites. Eastern philosophy, however, aims to accept both yin and yang as realities in the world and to balance these realities in both social and spiritual activities, transcending dualism in the process. In the East, neither yin nor yang is good or bad, right or wrong, or--to use an engineering analogy--1 or 0.

So what's the yin and yang got to do with anything editorial? After publishing an article, I get a (usually) politely worded response in which a reader expresses the opinion that I've given undue praise or criticism, or an overall surplus or deficit of coverage, to a certain vendor or design approach to solving a problem. Often such readers claim that I have not given proper consideration to alternative methods. Invariably, the next feedback I receive expresses the exact opposite opinion.

I'm quite pleased when I receive opposing responses. Sound strange? Let me explain. I have the privilege of researching and reporting on information that's potentially read by, and which potentially influences the design decisions of, a couple of hundred thousand engineers around the world. It's an awesome responsibility, and one that I take extremely seriously. The diverse needs of you, the reader, drive the research I do to prepare an article and influence the assortment of information sources that I use.

Each one of you is in a unique situation: You design systems with different functions, prices, research-and-development budgets, staffing levels, time-to-market schedules, and requirements for after-sale maintenance and upgrade. When I report on an application trend and the vendors and products addressing that trend, I am rarely able to reach the types of definitive conclusions that Western philosophy favors--for example, that vendor/product/technique "A" is good and vendor/product/technique "B" is bad.

Instead, I strive to adopt a more Taoist approach to my write-ups. I try to present the positives and negatives of each option, and my goal is to help you come to an informed conclusion based on your specific needs. If I come up with 10 good points and five bad points about technique "A" and five good points and 10 bad points about technique "B," I won't invent five bad things about "A" and five good things about "B" just to balance the two alternatives. And I won't hesitate to point out an alternative that I think is especially strong or weak for a majority of my readers.

On the other hand, I won't be unduly influenced by what a certain vendor's top five customers might be doing, regardless of whether those customers represent 50% of that vendor's business. To do so would be to ignore most of my readers. Avoiding the influence of top customers is sometimes harder than you might think, because the vendor tailors its literature, development tools, and other collateral to the needs of those few large customers, with an unstated goal of getting the rest of you to follow along.

Does editorial Taoism simply mean being wishy-washy? Some of you might think so, and that's OK. Ultimately, there is a "right" answer for each of you, although it isn't often the same one that's right for your colleagues in the next cubicle or on the next floor or for the people at the company down the street. However, with a little more meditation (to recall another Eastern practice) on alternatives, you might reach some surprising conclusions. (And I understand that you have limited visibility into and time to consider the situations of your engineering peers throughout the world.)

A diverse collection of reader responses tells me I've done my job and exposes me to perspectives I may not have considered or correctly prioritized. Keep those cards and letters coming!

You can reach Technical Editor Brian Dipert at 1-916-454-5242, fax 1-916-454-5101, e-mail edndipert@worldnet.att.net, URL http//:members.aol.com/bdipert.

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