An interesting observation upon reading the BBC Trust findings on the Brand/Ross incident which has been filling column inches in the UK over the past few weeks: 

“At 12:22 on Friday the [BBC Radio 2 Controller] Controller sent a one word reply from her BlackBerry authorising inclusion of the [controversial] material ‘Yes’ “

I’m sure most of us can empathise with having to simplify or hurry our response to something either by text message or email, or in fact misunderstanding something completely that we might perhaps have preferred to communicate in more detail in person or over the phone.

To our mind this is a similar symptom of poor ergonomics to that of “User Self Blame” discussed in our last post: In this case the issue is of users being held responsible for how they communicate when how they communicate may have been heavily influenced by limitations in the product or system they were using. Or limitations imposed by their ability or inability to use that product or system. Those limitations could most likely have occurred as a result of poor consideration of the user’s ergonomic requirements, such as how easy the original message was to read on the phone and thus how well it was understood. Or how easy it was to write a reply to the message which might have led to a short and nondescript response.

The reality is that it may have been a combination of factors entirely independent of the BBC Radio Controller receiving and responding to an email on her mobile phone, that led to all the problems. What was revealing however, was how the report from the BBC Trust made reference to that fact that she had used a Blackberry to do so. Perhaps implying that this was a contributing factor in her making the decision that she did.

Have you ever felt limited by technology?

Have you experienced any situations where there was a breakdown in communication or an unintended consequence of you using technology?

Do you think this might have been caused by the technology not allowing you to behave or communicate in the way you really wanted to?

We’d love to hear about stories like this as we think very often they occur as a result of a poor consideration of the Ergonomics of the user and could therefore be great additions to our exhibition at the Design Museum.