I have always loved macs, since they first came out I have been a devotee.

The design of the products has been much lauded over the past 10 years or so, thanks to Jonathan Ive and his team, but it was the original user interface and system that drove them that made them such great products to own and use.

But there was always one thing that bothered me. When you copied a file to another disc, very handily you were told how long it was going to take.

So, unlike PC users who just got a 'clock' - a mac told you how long in hours/minutes, and had a nice bar so you could see where you were.

But then, almost immediately the time would change. So you'd be told '1hr 10 minutes' - then a few seconds later '45 minutes', then '30 seconds' etc.

This type of 'misinformation design' is now all around us.

On our local underground station there are some swanky, relatively new signs which helpfully tell us what order the trains are going to arrive and at what time.

Now, your thinking 'trains are always late, so?' That's another discussion, but what I am talking about here is not unusual...

Yesterday, I looked up and was told the 18.15 would arrive on time, I had a couple of minutes to plan my journey so I was busily working out my connection at Richmond and home in time to read the kids a story. Great.

A couple of minutes pass. No train. At 18.18, the 18.15 which has not arrived, will still be 'on time'. Then, at 18.19, the sign changes to tell me the next train is at 18.24 and is a completely different train (overland not underground).

Where has hundreds of tons of machinery and a few hundred people gone? Is there a new 'Gunnersbury Triangle' into which trains disappear?

Trains are often late, but why design a system and make information available that is so completely wrong? Why can't it work out that if a few hundred tons of machinery and people hasn't got somewhere by a certain time, it can't still be 'on time'? It's not rocket science...

In some ways, if you look at the current 'information-super-hypeway' that is the internet, the same applies.

A search on Google rarely gives you an answer, usually it's thousands (hundreds of thousands) of pages - most of which is either not the answer (misinformation), or answers you'll never get to see.

What examples of 'misinformation design' have you seen?

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Posted By Mark Lesbirel at 7:47 AM in Category:And another thing...

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