Saturday, November 10, 2007

Humanistic design touches

I have been thinking some more about noises that things make which perhaps could have been designed in or out but somehow survived into the final product.

My MP3 player says"bye" but not"hello", it could have said "powering down" or just switched itself off. I wonder if bye is translated in foreign versions.

I used to own a motherboard which spoke on start up, until it entered into a suicide pack with my graphics card.

On start up it used to say,

"Power on self test complete, Computer now booting from operating system."
I miss that re-assuring voice. Of course you could have chosen different words how about:

"I have spun my drives, as far as I can tell you have a graphics card processor and some memory now lets see if the operating system wants to start today."

"Hardware OK, now cross your fingers, operating roller coaster system about to start"

"Hardware confirmed, now launching missiles"

"Hardware confirmed, Operating system starting. Do you feel lucky?"

"Hardware confirmed, please insert coffee."

"This is your computer talking. Pre flight systems have been checked, If you care to check out the Windows on your left, we will be serving Java shortly."
Sorry went off on a tangent there.

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