Dear Belkin (User-Centered Design)
I recently rediscovered the following email, something I sent a few years ago to Belkin customer service.
Dear Belkin,
Last month I purchased your Laptop Cooling Stand (#F5L001) from our local Best Buy. The product is very effective at cooling my laptop during long work hours but there is one small defect that concerns me: namely, the position of the cooling fan. You see, the fan is positioned in such a way that as I reach my hand under there to open the folding leg I invariably stick my finger into the fan instead of the pull for the leg. More often than not, the fan is operational and this results in the severing of the skin on the tip of my finger. As if the pain wasn’t bad enough, I also get blood on my precious MacBook Pro. The product designer who chose to position the fan opening a mere quarter-inch from the pull has clearly never heard of Don Norman, nor could he/she have been trained in the subtle art of user-centered design because in user-centered design one of the primary foci is *not* severing digits of the user whilst operating the device. Or, perhaps you consider this a “user error” in which case I refer you again to the work of Don Norman.
I have now sliced my finger tip off three times while attempting to use this “Laptop Cooling Stand” and have determined that I don’t enjoy your product at all, despite its indisputable cooling capabilities. I do see that you have a new version of the product (Laptop Cooling Lounge (#F5L028), which I would hope no longer carries the finger-slicing features of its predecessor. If you would be so kind, I would be interested in exchanging my laptop stand for the newer model in order to prevent further blood loss. You may have the old model; I would use it for slicing vegetables but as my skin seems to clog the fan blade I doubt it would be much good at carrots.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Lindsay
