The Cost of Bad Design = $127,791,034.82 USD

“The paper goes in face upwards, you say?”

“A lawyer’s failure to operate a fax machine correctly has been blamed for the European Commission losing a multi-million-euro court case.

The European Court of First Instance ruled in favour of five German banks which had been fined a total of €100m by the EC. In 2001 they had been found guilty of running a cartel to fix foreign currency exchange rates ahead of the introduction of the euro.”

Okay, let’s rewrite that first sentence…

“A designer’s failure to create a fax machine interface correctly has been blamed for the European Commission losing a multi-million-euro court case.”

Ahhh, much better.

39 Responses to “The Cost of Bad Design = $127,791,034.82 USD”

  1. RonZ Says:

    Once again self-titled designers everywhere find a cost that they think has something to do with what they do…

    No, bad design did not cost $127,791,034.82. Human error did. Perhaps the fax machine could have been designed to prevent such errors. Perhaps some designers are capable of creating such designs for fax machines. Perhaps a company would create a fax machine with such a design. Perhaps the owners of the fax machine that caused the problem couldn’t tell the difference between their current, problematic machine and others that people assert are better designed.

    Perhaps there are many other solutions, all much easier, that don’t involve redesigning the fax machine at all…

  2. Anonymous Says:

    I vote no fax machine. I hate the damn things. Partly because I always have trouble using them. Maybe they have high learnability? My guess is that they will be around for a while though.

    What I would like to know is does the company that made it have any internal reaction to this. Or other companies that make the machines? I don’t think change will come from humans refusing to use them. So that leaves any potential optimization options up to the designers (and those they work with) to figure something out. Or maybe they won’t and just keep making money anyway.

  3. MatthewOliphant Says:

    The above is me. I got logged out and didn’t realize it. Human error that.

  4. Anonymous Says:

    Yes. And nothing has anything to do with anything. Much of every discipline and most business decisions can be deconstructed this way. Bad design choices are often made with far flimsier reasoning. Perhaps a manager heard a sales guy speculate a big sale would result if this or that feature were added. Maybe that sales guy said was making excuses for not having any sales talent. Even so the feature might just end up in a product.

    But then those arguments are made by someone other than a designer so it must not count.

  5. Tinuviel Says:

    It all boils down to standards. A standard way to use the fax machine, a standard way to use a microwave, just like there’s a standard way to use a phone - you pick it up, dial your number, and it calls. Or on a cell, you turn it on, choose the # from the phone book or dial it, press “call” and it calls. Simple, it’s the same on every cell, on every phone. Standards. Once learned, much easier to interact with the world :P

  6. paper shredders Says:

    Perhaps the owners of the fax machine that caused the problem couldn’t tell the difference between their current and those peoples state their owns.

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    It seems odd that a country with one of the most sophisticated design industries in the world should not be making best use of those skills in the health sector, where good design is so critical.

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