Quality and Consumerism

My computer mouse broke.

That little plastic wheel stopped wheeling. Maybe a minor inconvenience for some, but the 3D modeling software I use every day uses the little wheel to zoom in and out of 3D views. It is as vital to navigating the 3D world as a keypad is to dialing a phone. I was stranded and irritated.

I immediately took the thing apart, believing that it could be fixed, and I could get back to work. What I found was of no surprise. The little axle for the little wheel had sheared off close to the hub, and no longer engaged the encoder. The tiny plastic axle, no more than 2mm in diameter had broken under normal operation. This was especially compelling when I took apart a 10 year old mouse of similar design, and found a steel axle, and an indestructible design. It was obviously designed to last forever, and worked flawlessly despite my best efforts to destroy it.

This mouse failure, I felt, was a design flaw; a complete lack of proper design with no testing to ensure safe and reliable operation. It was completely and absolutely the fault of the manufacturer.

Or was it?

I paid $15.00 for the wireless mouse at a large electronics retailer. I purchased it new, and picked it out from among 50 or more similar devices of varying price. The price of this mouse was on the low side for the features it offered. It was cheap and appealing, and I bought it under the assumption that it would work as advertised. I ignored other brand names and fancy features. It was a tool that I needed, and I spent the least amount of dollars to fill that need.

Subconsciously, I made the following assumptions.

1. The mouse was properly designed and tested to operate under normal use.

2. If the mouse failed, I could return it for a refund or replacement.

3. The manufacturer had resolved any design issues in response to consumer returns and complaints.

O.k., so here is where things aren’t what they used to be. For (1), the mouse was not properly designed and tested in the first place. It didn’t need to be, because (2) it would never be returned for replacement because it was too cheap to bother the effort, and (3) the manufacturer would never be informed of any design issues because nobody would bother to return it or complain. Things look sunny in Mouse Manufactoryville, so they keep churning out faulty mice.

The truth is, I tossed the faulty mouse in my garbage. I couldn’t be bothered the hour it would take me to return for a refund and replacement, and I needed to get back to work. I went to the local Goodwill and picked up an old indestructible replacement, and got on with my life.

By doing this, I had personally contributed to the erosion of product quality in our marketplace.

In my role as an engineer, my primary goal was to deliver parts at the lowest possible cost. For all of the hype about quality and design, my single most important design target was to provide additional revenue for the company in which I worked. I was also responsible for reducing cost on existing designs. This is not entirely bad, and if done properly, many cost reductions can improve the quality as well. But without accountability and feedback from the costumer, the trend is to continue trimming away until there is no cost left. If there were no customers, I would eventually reduce my cost to the bare minimum. I would build parts out of paper mache so long as they survived long enough to taken off the showroom floor. But since customers do complain on occasion, and vote for their product preference with their dollars, I was held accountable to deliver a minimum level of quality to meet the customers needs, and as such, chose to build my parts out of more durable materials.

What I realized with this mouse incident, was my own contribution to the erosion of quality in consumer products. The mouse didn’t break because it was made in China. The mouse broke because no one bothered to complain about the faulted design. The truth is, if EVERY broken mouse were returned to the store, the American company that imports the mouse would be held accountable, suffer financially, and quickly be compelled to resolve the problem in order to stop the financial bleeding. That notion of accountability is what defines the quality of American goods. But if a company remains profitable with a poor quality product, and no accountability, there is no incentive to change.

This cycle is partly to blame for the nasty and wasteful consumerist culture that we know today. We buy goods because they are cheap. We throw them away because they are cheap. Cheap is cheap, but quality never factors in to the equation. This really is a wasteful way to live.

As a consumer, I am an odd one. For every new item I purchase that breaks (which I find to be far too often), I replace it with something old or second hand. Old because I find many goods manufactured before 1980 to better quality (this is especially true of tools and appliances), or second hand because the sting of paying $5 for a drill that eventually breaks is much less than the sting of paying $50 for a drill that breaks. Occasionally I build things myself, with mixed results.  Strange, I know, but you would be surprised at just how much traditional, well built goods out perform poorly designed ones, and how often we are mislead to believe that new technology is a guaranteed improvement.

Odd consumer that I am,  I throw away fewer and fewer faulty products, and I save money in the process. My house is more or less free from plastic clutter, and what I no longer need can be sold or used by someone else rather than tossed in the garbage. I share with friends and neighbors, and I find myself more and more willing to pay for high quality goods, even if that means purchasing less stuff.

So that is what this is all about. My own contribution to the society in which I live, and the behaviors I need to change in order to shape the world for the better. In order to stop consuming resources, we all need to consider our own behaviors, and consider a new way of behaving. It starts with what we buy.

Daniel Ferguson