Hacker News Reader

You should watch some of engineerguy's videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/engineerguyvideo/videos. He goes over some of these small details in products and why they are there. It's quite interesting!

I used to work for Denso (who's heavily quoted in this story) in their research lab. I remember my boss telling me that one of the rubber seals in their HVAC system had something like 17 patents to get the characteristics just right (iirc they're the #1 auto HVAC supplier).

(It fit onto one of the openings in the box-like compartment you can see in the left side of the unit http://www.hpaircraft.com/neon/100_2342a.JPG)

I didn't appreciate it then, but I find modern automobiles to be a minor miracle given how many components go into it and the level of detail that goes into designing each one, both individually and so that they all get nicely packaged together.

What I think is interesting is that cars are technically complex, yet there are a lot of car companies, each making cars their own way. Usually, products that are highly technically complex are only made by a small number of companies, since R&D is expensive. I don't really know enough to speculate on why the car industry is that way.

Interesting question. Partially it's that the global car market is huge so there's enough profit to go around even with a lot of companies.

I think the more important reason is historical, though. The car companies of today were almost all established back in the days when shipping cars internationally was expensive, and operating a factory in a foreign country was difficult. So each major industrialised country wound up with a few manufacturers after a lot of consolidation -- in the US dozens of manufacturers got reduced down to three. Then there's three German, two French, one (major) Italian... Japan is a weird case but it is still consolidating... Only in the last few decades has the car market become really global, and as a result there's ongoing consolidation continuing, eg Fiat-Chrysler and Renault-Nissan.

I don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if many states didn't heavily subsidize their own car manufacturers early in the automobile boom.

To a first approximation, every nation subsidized their automotive manufacturers directly (government ownership, policies) and indirectly (contracts for building military vehicles, building highway systems and regulating the industry).

Good old-fashioned government subsidies. I guess you can't overlook the US-automaker bailout under Obama as being part of this process.

Yep, if it weren't for that, GM would probably be out of business now. Too bad.

Important fact is that the whole automotive industry is built on heavy outsourcing. Typical car manufacturer only manufactures the car body, maybe engine and does the final assembly. For everything else not only the manufacturing but also R&D is outsourced.

Also, motor manufacturers design basic platforms that are used across many models and often across many brands. A basic chassis, engine and drivetrain package might be the basis for a dozen different cars. Developing a platform might cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but those costs can be spread across several million cars.

http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/platform-sharing-for-dum...

http://www.autonews.com/article/20140804/OEM10/308049988/car...

Was going to write exactly this. Open the hood and you see Bosch, Denso, Delphi logos, not the OEM. The car maker makes maybe the engine, and even that is increasingly outsourced.

No car company on the planet, that I'm aware of, makes air conditioners, as one example. Nor do they make things like brake pads, brake calipers, radiators, headlights, I could go on and on. All these things are outsourced to suppliers. There aren't that many suppliers, and the suppliers pretty much all serve multiple automakers each. So lots of Japanese makers (probably all of them) use parts from Denso, for instance.

It's not that much different from laptop computer makers; there's a bunch of them, all with slightly different designs, but they all use CPUs from AMD or Intel, they all use optical drives from 2 or 3 different companies, they all use memory from a few suppliers, they all use LCD screens from a few suppliers, etc.

Another thing to consider is patents: take a brand-new car apart, and compare it to one from 1996. You'll find a lot of stuff really hasn't changed much (now compare the '96 car to a '76 car, and you'll see a lot of gigantic differences). A lot of stuff in the auto industry has become very mature IMO. Obviously there's a lot of new electronics in new cars (things like lane-keeping assist, radar cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, etc.), but many things look exactly the same: suspensions are about the same, brake systems are identical, the moonroof in my '15 isn't really any different from ones in cars from 10-15 years ago, etc. Patents only last 20 years, so a lot of stuff has probably reached a "good enough" level and the patents have all run out, so companies are probably just doing a lot of things the same way because it's been found to be optimal.

The history of the disposable coffee cup lid is always what I point to when people tell me that engineers and designers don't earn their pay.

http://philpatton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/05/the-coffee-l...

Convenience comes at a price, and only after a great deal of thought.

The little air hole is almost always too small to allow smooth drinking. A quick poke with the tip of a ball point pen is perfect. Engineering is hereby PROVED INVALID.

Funnily enough, I was just thinking the exact opposite this morning - how little design thought must go into some things. It was in relation to the poor user experience I'd just had from the toilets at work. As usual, the poorly designed/configured flush splashed water out of the bowl when I flushed, but I've become adept at jumping back in time. The other more pertinent issue is that the cubicle is so small in relation to the door size that I had a struggle to get out without brushing my coat against the wet splashed bowl. On this issue, I was thinking that it was probably caused by someone just buying some standard sized off-the-shelf components that looked roughly right and whacking them together, e.g. 2m board for sides, and 1m door with toilet protruding 80cm from wall, leaving you 20cm between toilet and open door (note that these are example sizes just to make the point - I didn't actually measure anything). In other words, no-one thought how big the cubicle actually needed to be. I guess there's probably some correlation between design input and cost, i.e. its probably just not worth anyone spending too much time thinking about that sort of thing.

I often find bathrooms that were around before ADA [0], and have since been retrofitted, have the worst designs. That's why I try to use the handy-capable stalls, or "suites" as I call them, whenever I have a chance.

Most newer bathroom designs seem sane to me, since they were designed with ADA compliance in mind. Except for airport bathrooms for some reason, where you have to cram yourself and your luggage into a stall that's the same size as any other stall outside of the airport.

[0]https://www.ada.gov/

I agree that the older, retrofitted bathrooms are indeed horrible designs. However, I completely disagree that newer bathroom designs are "sane". I have seen very, very few "sane" public bathrooms; usually they're just in fancy restaurants where they don't use the standard metal partitions, and instead spend a lot of money on real walls and tile and wooden doors.

As far as I'm concerned, any public bathroom where the partitions between stalls have any gap at all (especially about 12 inches as they usually are) are not sane. There is no reason for that gap; it's just creepy.

The gap is for easier mopping.

It also lets people check for feet before prying open the door.

It's also for if you have, er, a "wide stance" like former senator Larry Craig.

It also saves 12 inches of material.

It also is an affront to privacy.

They could save lots more material by just not having any partitions at all. Why don't they just do that?

As for checking for feet, airplanes solved that problem decades ago with door latches that indicate "occupied" when they're closed.

I recommend the movie Objectified, which is about exactly this.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectified

In a related vein, back when I was a product manager, I was always struck by how many customers came through who were the #1 manufacturer of toilet seats or plastic milk bottles or whatever in the United States.

>Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of common things had to deal with.

I do the same, and probably the one item that I've thought about more often than others is, hilariously, those novelty testicles they sell to attach to your car's trailer hitch. Between design, materials, manufacture, distribution...just how much work goes into truck nuts?

On the other hand, a lot of decisions are taken on the spot. Really, an astonishing amount. Of course the higher the volume of the product is, and the harder it is to change, the more effort is put into decisions, and there's seemingly no upper limit to how much effort managers are willing to allocate.

Relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/1741/

I get this exact same feeling, a thousand fold when I'm in a supermarket. To think of the amount of effort it has taken to design, manufacture, package, market and transport all those products (edible or not) is a little overwhelming.

Prior to eating a meal I occasionally give thanks a la grace style to someone in that chain.

Random things like thanking the person who fitted the alternator belt on the tractor that ploughed the soil the carrots were grown in.

This is why food waste killllls me. A field was sown, carrots grown, weeds picked, carrot harvested, inspected, washed, shipped, stored, sold, aaaand... it rots in my fridge and goes straight into the trash can off to the landfill. Ugh.

Or my favorite: life forms that have spent millions of years decomposing and transforming into oil are drilled out of the ground, refined, hauled somewhere, turned into plastic, hauled somewhere else to be formed into a spoon shape, hauled halfway across the globe to reach your table/store/restaurant... just to be thrown out without being used.

Have you read "Religion for Atheists", by any chance?

I haven't. Sounds like the kind of thing that might appeal to me, will look it up.

The fact that one can go to any US municipality over ~5,000 and have access to more or less the same supermarket experience...this is what people mean when the West is in the top X% of the world.

Thank you for thinking of us. -- A Carrot Seed grower and breeder

I'm always amazed that one can tip over a soft drink (with the lid on) and then the thing will explode everywhere when you try to open it, yet it was transported possibly thousands of miles over all sorts of rough terrain, jostled about, mishandled, loaded and unloaded quickly by forklifts, then stacked on shelves by hand, and the only thing it does when you open it then is just make a noise.

i think more about economic side of the things, how can be profitable for all parties (producer, transport company and supermarket chain is bare minimum) to sell me 2l bottle of soda for 0.19€, it's taking quite a lot space weighing 2kg, producer is about 150km away, yet all three parties make profit on this product? the letter itself (flavored soda) has probably lower value than packaging is packaging, transportation and storing in supermarket taking space of other products.

is there product which would take more space and weight more while being extremely cheap as soda drink? i can't think of anything as large and cheap as bottle of soda

Possibly bleach, and in some countries, gasoline/petrol (taxes are quite variable).

https://flowingdata.com/2011/03/22/gallons-of-stuff-that-cos...

i doubt that chart, gallon (6l) of Pepsi you can get here in promotion around 2 USD (.59€ for 2l bottle), gallon of drinks i buy cost .56€ so roughly around 60 dollar cents, no way bleach is that cheap

even 1l petrol cost with zero taxes way more than my 2l bottle for 19 eurocents

Not only relevant, but sure feels like the inspiration for the GP comment.

Having recently "invented" and manufactured a physical product, I can attest to how much time and effort is put into seemingly inconsequential product features. Coming from tech/services like many of you I had no idea how much time I'd spend on minor features that happened to be critical to bringing the product to market.

That being said, when coding software or accomplishing a purely "tech" task, most of my time is usually spent on the "minor details" so I guess it isn't all that much different.

Yep, and many times we end up with lousy products despite all this work. Case in point in the xkcd comic: the switch on the lamp cord. What an utterly idiotic idea; it's only done because it's cheaper, not because it's better for the user. In fact, I'd assert that lamps, in general, have some of the very worst product design for any class of modern product. They haven't improved substantially in many decades. We have amazing LED lighting now (as seen on the headlights of new cars, both the DRL systems and also on some cars which use LEDs for the main headlights), but our table/floor lamps are still unchanged from the 1950s, designed around the ancient Edison bulb, with horrible user interfaces (switch on cord where it's hard to reach, or switch next to bulb where you have to stick your arm up inside the lampshade and try to find it in the dark).

I've heard people say that the space shuttle is so complex no single person can understand it entirely. I feel like my car is likely a candidate now too.

Or a pencil, for that matter...

I, Pencil (from 1958): http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html