Recall Overkill
Barry Beith / Design Research / Ergonomics / Human Factors / Industrial Design / User Experience / User Research
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is chartered with protecting the public from bad product design and recalls thousands of cribs due to the inability of some parents to follow directions. Now granted, often many designs and instructions for assembly are so bad as to be flagrant violations of all that is “design holy”, still three to four million cribs. And why, because a handful of children are injured, a smaller number die. Please don’t over-react. I understand the anguish of parents who lose a child or who are feeling guilty because their child was harmed or frightened. I get the anger they feel in this day and age over desperately needing to find the right scapegoat. However, the penalty seems to vastly outweigh the crime here and the solution seems to be all wrong.
Along with cribs, we now see a recall of 3.4 million window shades by IKEA. Why? Because a child almost choked by having the cord wrapped around its neck. The agency says about 500 children have choked to death since the early 1980s. They estimate about one child a month dies. This is horrible, but design cannot replace the watchful eye of parents. Design recalls cannot replace the common sense and even “over-protectiveness” and “hyper-vigilance” parents need to exhibit for their infants and toddlers. There are far more creative ways for an infant or toddler to harm them selves than we think because we survived, probably due to our parents over-protective natures, when we were growing up.
Recalls have severe impacts on all the stakeholders. Manufacturers, distributors, retailers are all hurt, some even destroyed by such recalls. Consumers are often left with poorly designed and dangerous items because the cost of replacing them is beyond their means. e.g., cribs. The confusion, inconvenience, cost, and disruption of lives due to these mass recalls are manifest. Don’t get me wrong, those who knowingly and willingly introduce poor designs for profit sake, e.g., use of lead-based paint or tainted dry-wall from China, deserve retribution, but often recalls are based on oversights and unintended and unexpected consequences rather than intentional bad practices.
It seems to me as a human factor trained professional who works in product design, usability testing, and safety, that the CPSC and other agencies tasked to protect the consumers in this country have options. Quite simply, the CPSC should require hazard analysis, risk-analysis, and usability testing for all products deemed capable of harming a person. For example; chainsaws, power tools and products children and toddlers interact with should be tested. Such requirements need to be enforced, especially for products made overseas and sold to the U.S. market. There are professionals and methodologies time-tested and true to accomplish that very goal. The fact that there are businesses, which do not use them, doesn’t mean a company should not be required to do so.
As John Wooden, historic coach of the UCLA basketball program, once said, “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you ever have time to do it over.” These are truly sentiments of wisdom worth recalling.
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