Full episode transcript below
Geoff and Guy 'plug back in' to talk about how so many of us ended up with an e-waste drawer-full of cables. We also struggle to get through this episode without incorrectly describing USB formats in just about every way possible... which just might tell you something about the headache it can cause consumers.
Highlights include:
💡 How do purchasing behaviours and chip shortages influence design and manufacturing decisions?
💡 Why is it hard to decipher superfluous feature listings when buying new cables?
💡 How do redundant connection options prevent more e-waste?
💡 What tech consumer biases should manufacturers be considering?
Originally recorded on 13 May 2021.
To see examples of what was discussed in this episode, find us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
Subscribe and support the show by leaving us a rating or review on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.
And as always, just remember, you don't have to have a fancy job title to start noticing and improving the everyday experiences wherever you work...
Episode Transcript
Geoff Wilson [00:00:05] Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Experiences Podcast, where we uncover potential design improvements in the world around us by exploring one frustrating experience at a time. I'm your host and Chief Observer, Geoff Wilson, based out of Auckland. And joining me again today is Guy Thompson, an industry-observing Kiwi based in Melbourne. And today we're talking about cables. Yes, cables. The most interesting thing I guess we could think of at the last moment.
Guy Thompson [00:00:33] Hahaha. I'm looking forward to plugging into this topic.
Geoff Wilson [00:00:36] Ughhh and see? I already want to shut it off right there, like just go... just stop, we can't do that if it's that easy for him. No. But first, I'd like to call it a few notes real quick, a little housekeeping. It's been quite a while that I've noticed since I've released something. There's you know, all of us have a bunch of personal things we all go through in our daily lives, you know, some bigger than the others. And I had quite a tumultuous, if you will, past few months. But back at it now, trying to get this back on more of a routine schedule, ideally more more often than once every two months. But, you know, thanks to everybody who subscribed already and are seeing this come out on your list. If you're not already subscribed, go ahead and click that little button right now. You know, just pause it. It's OK. You know, no harm done if you pause right now. Do it. Click the button. Unless you're driving, then that's bad. Don't do that. And yeah, we're going to try to get some more special guests on in time. But for now, always with me, Guy. And this was your topic today. So, why don't you start us off. Why are we talking about cables? Hahaha.
Guy Thompson [00:01:35] Thanks, Geoff haha. The reason that I wanted to talk about cables as I looked around my kind of home office where many of us have spent quite a lot of time over the last year. And I'm a person who doesn't have a lot of life, cable, tidy sort of vibe. My cable's out so I can see them and I know where they are and I can see the plug into things. And I thought I do have a lot of things, both at all over the disc, plugged into things for mobile devices, for charging, for hard drives, for keyboards, all the sort of stuff. And I just sort of thought to myself, we've all got this drawer that continues to expand with cables that we get that and the cable cables and the box let you buy a device and it's got three different cables with it. And you decide to use one of the new ones and the other ones kind of go in the drawer. So there's this constant acquisition that we get of cables with electronic devices. And certainly in the last year or so, we've all been getting more of these devices. And it just led me to think about the way that we using this, the way that we acquired them, what they're made out of, how much waste is there if they get recycled, all of these different things about them, but also just the usability fact of does this ritualistic way that we plug something in and we have this confidence over the fact that it's connected to something and it's charging and it works and the net devices don't work. And it's like, is it the devices or the cable, et cetera? So, yeah, I just wanted to kind of unravel this topic and kind of get into it.
Geoff Wilson [00:03:01] You're going to have to run out of puns eventually.
Guy Thompson [00:03:03] Somehow I will never run out of puns. That's that's definitely true.
Geoff Wilson [00:03:07] Side topic. Is that even a pun if you just use that or is that just to. Is that a pun? Is that what it's called? I don't you know,
Guy Thompson [00:03:14] it's a play on words, but definitely not a very good.
Geoff Wilson [00:03:16] Yeah, OK, there we go. Settle, settle that argument. At least we'll know one thing for sure today.
Guy Thompson [00:03:21] Absolutely. So I suppose the first part of this, this idea to focus is really around looking at the the mobile devices that we had and a lot of these you would use at home, not just out and about. And it's the charging process. So over many, many years, we've gotten lots of different cables that have become increasingly smaller that you plug your device in to basically charge it rather than talking about audio cables or video cables and different things, really talking about the cables we used to power and recharge our devices.
Geoff Wilson [00:03:52] You media what you don't want to talk about how we used to have, like the the yellow, the red, the white cables. We had to plug in four different things. You don't want to talk. You don't want to go into that at all.
Guy Thompson [00:04:00] I don't want to talk about the ACA corporation. I don't know if it's alive anymore. It's probably not. But, you know,
Geoff Wilson [00:04:06] I really do hope there's some people who have no idea what I'm talking about
Guy Thompson [00:04:09] now. I hope the people haven't had to try and work out how to get the audio to come through this, the stereo
Geoff Wilson [00:04:15] from the TV. Or in that case, would you have men? No, I said we weren't. But now I am. Just that little note of like I remember so many times, like, I've got two individual ones. I'm like, well, surely if I do left a left, right, right, white to and to red, I can make this work. It's I've got a hodgepodge of like three different couples making up a single one anyway. Yeah. That's why we're not going to talk about that because nobody knows that's old. We should leave it to die. Exactly.
Guy Thompson [00:04:40] But I do have a little point about that which is around. I think the reason that home theater systems never really go is fully embedded and kind of took off is as much as I think manufacturers were hoping to, was actually the complexity of cabling and plugging everything in. I head to the remote speakers had to be powered, but they also had to you had to get the sound bit from them. Had to be calibrated the distance everyone's living room was different and you'd have to really be an audio file and really be into it to set that up. And that's probably only one per cent of your consumer market really cares about that. Most people just comes out of the speakers and it's fine, which is why you now have a sound bar that just sits under your TV. The TV's already got speakers. You could probably just plug a subwoofer into the TV and it gives you enough based on sound bite as well.
Geoff Wilson [00:05:29] You sound more like the past two summers have had. They come with subs, but they also wireless wirelessly connect to those. And so once again, you don't even need a wire there. You basically only need the wire to plug up the bar to the TV. And that's if you're not using Bluetooth from the TV. So you can actually get away with an entire sambar and sub with just the power cords.
Guy Thompson [00:05:47] That's it. Exactly. So so I suppose that was that was the topic we were going to kind of talk about towards the end, which is around, you know, the future of connectivity and where these will go. So first of all, I want to unravel what is cabling look like now and then? Where's it going in the future around all the different protocols we have, Bluetooth, etc, for wires wirelessly communicating with devices and also wireless charging as well. So let's kind of unpack the whole plugging in devices. And what's the latest device that you have that you plug in?
Geoff Wilson [00:06:20] Well, I can't my brain doesn't immediately think of latest, but I do think of what it takes just for this podcast that I've got the microphone to plug in. That's the USDA. I've got my headphones, which I'm using a regular audio cable to plug into a dock, which has like 50 other literally well, one, two, three, four or five, six of at least seven different wires going down like monitors devices of the mouse. So all of these just alone. There's a lot of them. But as for other devices, I mean, obviously, whenever you get a new phone, you either it either comes with a cable, you know, and generally it's one for charging in the wall. So that's probably the last main thing. Spadoni phone, you get a new cable in the package comes know the new wall outlet. And so that's what you get. You get a new one of those things.
Guy Thompson [00:07:07] And that's interesting because I upgraded a phone the other day and it was just a an iPhone. It's a and it only came with a thunderbolt to us basically cable, which is ironic because I don't believe I have a wall outlet that includes a USB say. So I'm going to have to just plug it into a port of some kind. One of the battery packs that I have has no USB on it. So I'm like, hmm. But of course I have plenty of Thunderbolt cables that have USB I on the other end, which is what I'm using. So this is sort of if I want to plug it into something as USB say only, which is probably only going to be a MacBook that only has USB say which I have not purchased yet because it didn't want reluctancy having dongles and stuff. So I'm very much looking forward to September and the new MacBook pros that have lots of ports again, so I can plug in all the cables that I still have that I have not thrown out.
Geoff Wilson [00:08:02] Speaking of timely things like dates and SEPs, this is making me realize again that we already recorded an episode literally five months ago around upgrades that I'm teasing now. And we talked about how you haven't upgraded your phone to that iPhone yet. So these are going to be out of order. And that's the world of podcasting. This is
Guy Thompson [00:08:20] true. And and what I'm referring to is a work phone that I upgraded. I do still have the iPhone ten is, which is like X, which I have not unpacked yet. So I'm ready two years behind.
Geoff Wilson [00:08:33] Well, that's fine, because we've recorded that at the time you had. And so I'm still going to leave the scene and we'll still be in order. You won't be able to tell except for this.
Guy Thompson [00:08:42] Absolon is so next we can talk about like my my upgrade process to a two year old phone. That's brand new.
Geoff Wilson [00:08:49] But that's the. So on that note, though, if your you're listening to USB see, when I was thinking and you asked me what did I what device did I get last I was thinking of my Samsung phone, which is the USB key and the cord I got is USB stick on both ends. But it does come with the wall adapter that is a USB key to like New Zealand outlet plug now. Sometimes I even wonder why you can detach the UCC because it is a USB stick, the USB. So I guess it could be useful in other contexts. But like you mentioned, battery packs and stuff, a lot of devices or, you know, public places you go don't really have USB charging yet. And so a USB double in the cord isn't super useful right now because there's very limited things you can plug that into.
Guy Thompson [00:09:33] It's a good point because I notice they'll often come with a when you buy new harddrive, it'll have you especially USB cable. And I thought, well, I don't necessarily have devices that have both of that on the same end at the moment. They might be hard drives that I had that for, but it'll still be a USB 3.0 to us b c on the hard drive device. But for a phone or any other electronic device still charging, if it's an Apple device, it's going to be a thunderbolt. If it's a Android device, it's going to be a USB like the mini USB C3 where you had it. Like, I love how you just sent me, like a picture of what it is. It's a micro B. Yes, micro B is the kinetic.
Geoff Wilson [00:10:14] Well then you also see the USB 3.0, but 3.0 has multiple shapes. So let's just get that out of the way now to USC is a cluster of I want to want to say more words than that. It's the cluster, that's for sure. It's a it's as you I'm sure you're all aware there's a million different names for all these different ones. Sometimes you just reverted to looking like shapes. Oh, it's the oval one. It's the house looking one. It's the flat looking one. Olsher images again in our social pages just to kind of link to what these things are. I'm sure we'll get it wrong 50 times. But you know what? I would actually even love to have hate mail saying you did it wrong because, hey, it's better than no mail at all.
Guy Thompson [00:10:53] I like. Yeah, like we get hate mail for, like referring to the wrong cable in the incorrect way. I'd refer to every cable on Metro in the wrong way. But I think the interesting thing about it is we've brought this topic up before around. We've brought this topic up before the importance of standards. And it's really interesting to see how something as well-established as USPI is still confusing because they work in different ways. You know, just it just still gets confusing and frustrating. And it seems that device manufacturers want to try to make it easy for us, but it seems to get progressively harder over time. You think of how many times manufacturers have changed the different cable that you can use. Therefore, you end up keeping a whole bunch of them.
Geoff Wilson [00:11:38] Well, and even on that note, you know, as a consumer, I'm not really privy to the engineering reasons why they chose a USB micro AI versus a USB A versus a USB 2.0 B or what, you know, any of these different shapes and sizes. To me, it's just annoying because I can't just go pick one cable, use it. Now, obviously, I know and also acknowledge early, you know, Apple tries to do its own thing oftentimes. Also, they get to sell you more stuff that way. But outside of that, yeah, just any other non Apple product. Why they all have different cables from a consumer side. You just you might not understand. And that's why this gets just incredibly confusing and you just naturally do get frustrated. Why aren't these all the same?
Guy Thompson [00:12:24] Because the interesting thing the interesting thing about that challenge is that we can assume the two things that you want is increased data transfer speed and increased voltage for charging. Right. So you've got a larger device, the bigger battery that's going to take longer to charge on the older cable. Therefore, you need to use the new platform that has more voltage that it can transfer. And of course, you want to be able to transfer more data when you're backing up your phone, when you're transferring photos or video over that cable onto a computer, this is when you're transferring them through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, which of course, both have different protocol speeds if you want to transfer a lot of data. And that's the interesting thing about how quickly this has really happened, that you think around you think around how many times we've gone through using different cables. We've probably seen maybe four to five major changes over the last ten, fifteen years, which is enough that it's frustrating because you suddenly you can't plug the same cable and so you come to a dead stop. But the interesting thing about the software side is we've gone from trying to upload quite a small video file from your phone ten years ago to trying to copy a fork video over Bluetooth. And then you suddenly realize that it was never designed for that and it's got to be over Wi-Fi and then that Wi-Fi is not fast enough. So it's going to be in or whatever the next one is so that it's fast enough to actually transfer all that data. So there's this constant curve that the the speed and the resolution of the of the camera and the video that you capture on that device are always going to continue to increase. And I was looking at the that my two year old phone, the brand new one in the box a couple of days ago and thinking. Very soon, you will be able to watch and record 8-K video on your phone and it will be 120 frames a second, so to be super high is super realistic and etek so it look like real life on your little, you know, and it'll be a full screen on the phone. Right. So you double the resolution, you're only saying half of it, you transfer it onto your computer. Looks amazing, right? This will happen pretty quickly. So you'll start to get that resolution and dependance on the device. So it just looks absolutely like real life. You can't see the pixels at all. And as we continue to have those challenges, the cable that you rely on starts to become more and more inferior and more and more difficult. So we're actually at that point now where the wireless protocol is actually much better for transferring the data, but the power consumption is still the challenge. And that's what's hard enough to get a standard for plugging into your phone with a cable. Now, the next challenge is how does that wireless charging system work? Because I look at that thing and go, I don't know if my device is going to work on that. So but at least you can look at the end of a cable and I can plug that into my phone. I know that the wall outlet modifies the voltage for the device that I'm plugging into. So it's going to be pretty safe at that just charge quickly or slowly depending on what the device happens to be.
Geoff Wilson [00:15:23] Now, that's a big assumption that I actually understand after living here for four years will actually destroy the devices I brought from the U.S. or not, because like like you mentioned, you can sell outlet, plug it in. And yet if you're using adapters, like I've got vacuums and things that I bought from the U.S. just because I had it in the U.S. and so I brought it back with me when I moved here, I'm still slowly moving some stuff back from there. And it's one of those you know, I've got an adapter, but there's the voltage adapters and there's like the regular, like, plug adapters. And every time I'm like, you're not going to plug this in and just hope that it didn't explode. Good.
Guy Thompson [00:15:59] Because I love how like your intense study of engineering results and you plugging in a vacuum cleaner and it suddenly goes twice as fast, it's twice as much noise and lasts for 15 seconds and then starts making a smoke. And you're like, yeah, yeah.
Geoff Wilson [00:16:15] Well, on that NATO. But a serious side of the serious story is we did buy a I think it was like a curling iron from my wife on Amazon because New Zealand stores just didn't have one equivalent to it or of the same name brand and stuff that we wanted. And so she tried to buy one, but it was a USB plug there for and so it literally did burn out in the first 10 seconds just because that same thing, we weren't sure exactly what kind of outlet or what kind of plug it needed. And so instead of plugging it into, I guess, that special voltage converter, even though I think we might have done that, and yet it's still the 240 120. You know what? Again, yes. Engineering degree. Yes. I've actually studied electrical engineering to some at least a few courses in that sense of trying to talk about resistors and all that kind of stuff. That's so long ago. I don't recall a single minute of it, but I got a degree and that's what mattered.
Guy Thompson [00:17:07] I love how we both clarified the point that we weren't going to talk about electricity because neither of us were qualified to talk about power consumption and voltage and we still managed to talk about it. So anyway, moving on, moving back to the era that we understand, which is how low,
Geoff Wilson [00:17:23] how we really
Guy Thompson [00:17:26] iron the thing. The reason that got me thinking about this this week was that it's still incredible to me that our electronic devices really just only last for a day. Right. So you actually still have quite a high reliance on plugging it in and finding that power and plugging it's, you know, plug it into your car. I'm going to plug it into a spare battery pack, charging a power bank. I'm going to plug it into a friend's computer or wall outlet. You need to find that power because these devices continue to use more and more power all the time. They have more and more performance. We want to do more things with them. So with, you know, Moore's Law, we're getting more and more performance all the time. But the actual the power capability is pretty much staying the same, that kind of a last day and a half, if you're lucky.
Geoff Wilson [00:18:12] Yes, so speaking of charging, I mean, I've got a cable in every single room, we've got a cable in each vehicle, got a cable in the office, kind of cable in my book bag. I've got one in each of these places so that no matter where I go, I've got that thing because, you know, hey, we're all addicted to our phones. We all need to charge 100 percent at all times.
Guy Thompson [00:18:28] How many vehicles are we talking? And we'd like to snowmobile Greg in the helicopter airplane.
Geoff Wilson [00:18:34] I've got a space station that I launch every now and then. So, yeah, that space station takes up one point one a by the way, it just does the entire thing powered off that.
Guy Thompson [00:18:43] I honestly I honestly think that it's going to be one of the first problems getting to Mars is just like finding a cable you get all the way, then you're going to try and recharge something like that. We forgot we were going to go.
Geoff Wilson [00:18:57] But then on this note of being in every place, my wife also has her. She's going to phone she's got one of each of her own cables. Yeah.
Guy Thompson [00:19:05] So you've got the android. And so it's it's sort of it's the cable wars, right?
Geoff Wilson [00:19:10] Yeah. Not only that, it's you know, if you've only got so many outlets, then you're kind of constantly unplugging or plugging in each other's stuff in like it's not like it's a big hassle, but it's still that idea that I think you already mentioned that we don't use the same form factors. All these devices still use whatever thing that they want to use for whatever their engineering reasons are for using that. And it just does make life hell a little bit in the very tiny, frustrating ways.
Guy Thompson [00:19:34] Yeah. And there's I think there's a limitation there in terms of manufacturers wanting to go on to the next platform. And it's protocol. You saw this happen with Apple going from sort of thunderbolt to us, they say, and then having like a different kind of interim phase as well. And I think that's that's a really difficult thing for for consumers to navigate, because you as you mentioned, you've got all these plugs and cables that are all sort of the things you want to connect to. And so as a consumer, when you make that choice to transition onto a new cable, you kind of it's not just that one device and that one charging port. It's the connectivity in your vehicle. It's the connectivity and your gym equipment and every other possible place that you're going to plug that thing in. It's a lifestyle device, this mobile devices with you all the time and all these different environments. Therefore, it needs to be far more backwards compatible. So, as you say, new devices come out. They will still probably have that USB 3.0 large cable as the main charging connector on the other end. I think you're starting to see that USB see phase changing now, but I think that's going to take a little bit longer because people are still going to basically want both. And and it's taken a while to see that USB three that the large one at every possible location that you can. And yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what happens next with those.
Geoff Wilson [00:20:53] I mean, I still remember when iPhone changed from that really wide pin that the. Yeah. The thirty to the light because I had an iPhone at the time and, you know, the world went crazy at that point when that changed because everybody had speakers around their house and my car ports and all these other things that you plug your iPod into with that wide connector. And then, yeah, that changed and people rejected it for so long. And yeah,
Guy Thompson [00:21:17] I'm going to make it a little bit of a call out now if anyone was involved and device manufacturers and device design. And at that point during that transition, it'd be really interesting to hear from you because I feel like Apple made a really big push to third party device manufacturers to say, look, if you build the 30 pin connector into your device, you can dock the iPod. You know, it's going to be great. And suddenly every manufacturer came out, Boese would have the home speaker and it only had that one connector. And then within like a year or two later at night, we're going to we're going to Thunderbolt Cable. And suddenly you had these large bulky devices. People had spent hundreds of dollars on thousands if it was a piece of equipment. And even now you will go into a gym and say, this legacy machine that's the gym is probably going to be using for five or ten years. That still got that 30 percent iPhone connected. And of course, you can kind of attach like a dongle on top of that to adapt it again and then but it doesn't balance because it's the wrong shape. And so that, again, is things. Is that really interesting challenge where, you know, we as consumers want to connect our devices to everything. But of course, third party manufacturers want to connect your device to what they make the toaster, the refrigerator, everything. And that transition point with the only connect is that connect. I think it's a really difficult thing to manage because a huge investment and the data to say that's the only way you going to be able to connect this device like in the middle of the thing or wherever it goes. And and it's much tighter than having the cable. Yes. But even now, I think having the cable connectivity is the way to do it, because that docking mechanism always seems to be a failure point for for legacy equipment,
Geoff Wilson [00:22:56] which I guess is there's two points I got on that. One is I think there's a growing theme around waste as I'm kind of feeling out in this. The first one, all of those devices that basically they are wasted now. They're all just going in the rubbish, going in the landfill somewhere because there's nothing else to do with things that have that many parts. The speaker, you can't just shut down the recycling and then there's no point taking that to a thrift shop. You could, but, you know, it just kind of sits on the shelf there until they throw it away, too. So there's a lot of waste on that side. But then also, I did start wondering, well, the manufacturers have, you know, put a lot of money into getting that thing built and shipped and marketed and all that. But this is a new opportunity for them to sell more stuff. So in some ways, like, hey, they get to sell the one with the lightning connector now. But, you know, as a human centered designer, if you will, that idea of Waitstill despite for profit, even though the business sees that as potential profits after a while to sell you the brand new thing, because you've had that old speaker for five years, I don't really like that idea of manufacturing more things for the sake of replacing it. Yeah. When you could have how could we think? And I guess to me that's the challenge that drafting early on in this episode. How do you think ahead to make something that can be interchanged and so maybe in the future you don't have a device that oh, sorry, you had a USB plug? Well, we don't have that anymore. We got to throw that away now. That's the USB. And so how do you make some that maybe just change out one little piece so it's not even a dongle. It's I guess it's like a replaceable.
Guy Thompson [00:24:21] Yeah, I think so, yeah. It's having that redundancy built in and I think for a lot of audio equipment we still have that and that you have an auxiliary power even in your car or you Osteria, you know, you've got an export and you can just plug a headphone multimodal adapter in there and you can connect an audio signal through a three point five ml. I think having that going forwards with a USB three connector will probably be the equivalent that if you have a docking mechanism of some kind on the on the device, you've still got the fallback that you have an interrupt for that. You know that Hubble, that dock connector doesn't interrupt and therefore they need to plug into it, because this is one of the biggest challenges that you're going to have if you're designing products or you're working for a company that sells products. Is that on the one side of your business, you have really significant and important sustainability concerns to address around power consumption and carbon footprint and just the overall sustainability of your business and what you're doing and how you're operating and how you are a corporate citizen in the world. But the other side of that coin is you still need to keep selling products every year to make money and pay everyone. So if you take the old model of building a fridge that lasts for 20 years, then you can't keep selling fridges to people because they've got enough fridges. So there's this really difficult tension point between, you know, making consumer devices that people keep consuming and throwing away and literally trashing versus making something that lasts a bit longer. So absolutely, it's not a device manufacturers best interests to make a device that lasts for several years because then you buy less of them so that, you know, that redundancy and that planned obsolescence is as a key factor and, you know, consumer electronics production today. And the interesting thing I think about that right now is, of course, through the pandemic, we've seen supply chain challenges around chip manufacturing. Everyone all over the world started buying a lot more devices to be able to work from home keyboard mice, webcams, laptops, tablets, phones, everything. So the existing supply of chips that were being used by device manufacturers of any kind and we're all absorbed up very, very quickly to make all of those devices. So there's been at least a 25 per cent jump in laptops and I think 50 per cent for crime books and so well and TVs, everything we're using at home. So the global supply of those chips has been absorbed really, really quickly. And a lot of other companies that used a lot of chips, like auto manufacturers, actually canceled their orders and March last year because they were expecting the decline in vehicle sales. So vehicle producers, for example, have gone to the back of the queue compared to device manufacturers that are still selling very, very, very highly. Schools all over the world are still making sure that all their kids have laptops to be able to work from home. And so if you're a device manufacturer now and you're thinking about the kinds of features and capabilities you want to put into a device, I think there may be some limitations. And kind of going back to the drawing board a little bit on, you know, we could put this feature in, but it's actually going to take longer because we don't have those chips available or we can make, you know, 2000 units of this device with this chipset. But if we put this extra feature and we don't even have that, so we can't even make them. So I think they might be some compromises in terms of device complexity or the chips that go into a motor vehicle, particularly hundreds of them in a car. You think of how many chips are just in your air conditioning controller or your phone or the remote control for the TV. And there's dozens and all these devices around your home. The average person actually has hundreds of chips and they house. We just can't see them because they're inside the devices. So I think if you're in the process of designing a device at the moment, there's going to be some limit limitations on the features you can put onto it the capabilities that we have. And so I think it might influence a little bit of simplification that will come out. So the point we talked about is. Around the docking mechanism and the backwards compatibility that a device may have, you may find that devices go for like the simplest possible solution, which is just a USB three connector on the back of the device as a as an interruption, as a backup option, the same way that you would see an auxiliary audio cable being able to be plugged into the vise, the the really tailored new connectivity that only works with the newest, most modern device. Those decisions, I think, might be able to be a little bit hesitant to make that because, A, the devices are changing so quickly and B, you can't get the chip to make it work anyway. So there's just going to be like a little area that you risk the phone on top. It's not going to actually plug into the device at all because we've all gone into like, you know, Jem's and saying these old gym equipment that's got an old connector in it or you go to a hotel and there's there's the low 30 pin connector on the top of the the radio from an iPhone or an iPod you definitely don't own anymore. So it's going to interesting to see how that supply chain constraints and challenges a fixed design going forwards. Do we actually see a little bit of phase of simplification and a little bit more sustainability around the device design simply because you can't make and sell the devices as quickly?
Geoff Wilson [00:29:21] So with this then? So, yeah, if things are getting more expensive, one thing that came to mind was will the materials of how the cables are actually made, the durability of it? Because, you know, if it frays or breaks or whatever it is you can't use, it goes in the trash, more materials used and wasted. And I know I've seen some cables that have, you know, what do you call the typical stuff? Like I'm holding it up. Then you can see it in your iPhone. The the things you're using your headset right now or my wire. What is this, like a rubbery plastic? I don't even know what this is actually what material this actually is.
Guy Thompson [00:29:53] Yeah. So this sort of plastic, what do you call it? I want to say the closure, but it's the protective layer that surround the assets, the external it's the external casing of the cable, the asset.
Geoff Wilson [00:30:05] She thinks things like that. You know, if you bend it, some of these some of these are durable. But some of these if you bend too far, especially around where they connect, you'll it normally splits, especially gets older, and then you've got some fraying copper and stuff out there. But I've seen some cables that are actually wrapped in like a nylon kind of braid around it to try to protect that more. And it seems to do the job. But I've also before this episode looking it up. Apparently they make steel braid cables now, which I don't know if I actually have any of those, because I guess what aspect of breaking them I never even considered is pets. You know, pets destroy wires. I've definitely heard some stories. Once I thought about that,
Guy Thompson [00:30:43] there will be some pet owners out there that that are listening to this.
Geoff Wilson [00:30:46] So, yes, some manufacturers actually make steel cables like headphone cables and stuff just to prevent your cat knocking on it or whatever it is. What children tunnel.
Guy Thompson [00:30:56] The inconvenience of having a pet showing through a cable, I think would be quite high, especially when that cable is absolutely attached to the device. That's an interesting thing about, you know, these really expensive headphones that the more expensive the headphones, you can always disconnect at the at the headphone, at the top and the other end. So you can replace that cable. You know, you got cheap headphones. If the cable is embedded and you can't get it out. Right, you just you're stuck with that. It hits it and it goes in the trash.
Geoff Wilson [00:31:21] Sorry for the honest moment of realization. If you're wearing one of those right now in your head listening to this and you're like,
Guy Thompson [00:31:26] yeah, yeah, you're going to have to keep that away from the floor. But yeah, you're right, the the protective layer that goes around the cable in terms of its resilience, because that's one of those challenges around design. Right, is that these consumer electronics are designed to be consumed. You don't want them to be bulletproof because otherwise someone is going to use it for seven or eight years and you want to sell them a new one. And the next year or two is this. There's all these new features, this great, this stuff coming out. The style has changed. You want to influence that customer. So they want to keep buying more from your future.
Geoff Wilson [00:31:57] Sometimes it's the other advertising aspect where I think it's just bullshit. I mean, God help you try to look at Amazon and order cables to their website and whatever other store you're using because they try to plug in the product names to sell you all the different benefits of it, like some of these on the screen. An hour, I'm going to read this out loud. USB 3.0 to email one foot USB to USB cable, USB male to male cable double and USB cord with gold plated connected with four hard drive enclosure's, DVD player, laptop cooler sat nav, GPS receiver pedia. It's like they're just trying to hit every single possible word you might ever single like ever type in there. And that's how buying cables is nowadays.
Guy Thompson [00:32:36] And I sympathize with that because actually the entire product listing name is really just search engine optimization for listings. So it makes sense. But this is the same challenge we have for all products, right? It's the reason that the active ingredient for a pharmaceutical product that you sold over the counter is written on the box because they're all the same. That's generic. It's pretty effective. But you depending on, you know, what you're looking for in the product, you may be looking for those triggers. The thing that's 99 per cent fat free or extra strength or whatever it is, and you'll see those as well. There's triggers for a cable that's that's. Gold plated or super high speed or ultra double performance, nigga, whatever, that we use all sorts of different language to try and convince you that this cable is better than the generic one sitting next to it and most of the time, the kind of just stretching the truth a bit. And most cables will work the same way. But the only real challenge you've got is as cable links, because I did have this experience the other day trying to use a 15 meter HDMI cable to lay around the apartment from one device to another. And it didn't work. It couldn't handle a fork signal reliably, even though very clearly on the side fork capable, gold plated cable. But the thing that that sort of, you know, indicated it might not work in the first place was that it was probably about 18 or 20 million. Yeah, this ain't going to work.
Geoff Wilson [00:34:01] So it actually, because of the length, it's not working. Yeah.
Guy Thompson [00:34:05] So the longer cable is the as far as I understand explain, I said,
Geoff Wilson [00:34:09] oh, we're back to here again this time. Yeah. Yeah. So we already realized that we have no knowledge and I
Guy Thompson [00:34:15] love his my assumptive science part is my really rough understanding of the way that a cable works when it's no pressure to get in with another device is that the electrical signal has to travel through the cable. But the cable itself acts as a natural resistor to the electrical signal. So the longer the cable is, the lower the power of the signal gets because it's it's getting absorbed by the material that's actually carrying the signal. So once you get to the other end, you've either got to use a booster or some kind to boost that signal back up to the quality you need. It's the same system that you'd have to use in a TV store to have all those HDMI signals traveling all over the store to hundreds of televisions. You've got to use boosters and amplifiers all over the store to make it work. So actually, when you're trying to make a signal, go 15 meters around your house, you probably need to use an amplifier at the other end to make it actually work. So that was just an experience I had the other day. I was trying to spend no money and it didn't work. So anyway, I don't even know the point I was making before I kept unraveling the rest of this topic, because I feel like this this topic, like a long cable, can just go on forever. But I think we were trying to get across and this was around the topic we always want to talk about, which is the design decisions that we make based on the projects and the products that were involved and that we touch. And I keep thinking about the experiences that we have as consumers and around how you can influence the the manufacturing of products by the decisions that you're making as a consumer around the cables. Do you want this particular device because it has this connectivity or are you staying with a legacy device because you like the connectivity that you already have? So just think about like you can make as a consumer, careful choices about the product you buy, how many cables are in the box, etc., and give that feedback back to a manufacturers. So they actually take that on board. And you can be part of that process of companies improving the way they make decisions about the connectivity in what they actually put in the box view as well,
Geoff Wilson [00:36:15] which always feels hard in some ways because, you know, like how much do these companies know right off, you know, how much people are using their cable? So let's say you've got wireless charging versus you, SBC, like my phone, maybe I wireless. They charge it every day, but maybe I also never use that and I only use the other cable. So how do they know which one to keep in their product based on my buying habits, because they still offer multiple options there.
Guy Thompson [00:36:38] It's interesting, right. So you a manufacturer will still put that backwards compatibility. And just as a safety valve, it's like they they know they've always just put it there and eventually they'll take it off. Like you think of how long a vehicle has been on the back of a motherboard for or and I sort of corporate level kind of laptop has been there for so long. And then eventually, you know, five to ten years now we've got like an HDMI cable or something else or a many display. So I feel like there is this slow transition process that happens based on I think it's often driven by those large scale purchases when a corporate purchaser for schools or business is buying like 5000 laptops and they all want them with the vehicle, then the consumer is going to get the same thing, you know, or if consumers like if they get that feedback and store that, hey, there's three models of this Mac laptop, and the only one that people are looking at, one is the one that doesn't have the the touchpad display or has the USB, whatever they'll
Geoff Wilson [00:37:35] call it, actually has more than one port total.
Guy Thompson [00:37:37] Exactly like though kind of fade that process back. But I think this is this is something that I'd like to hear from, from people who are listening to the podcast, as well as around the process that you would use to study consumers in the way that they use devices and their own home. Because the way that I would guess that you could study people is to actually tell them you're studying something else. But look at how many cables they have. You say like we're going to look at how you buy things online, but what and we're going to come to your house and watch you while you buy stuff. But you're actually watching. Is that how they charge the phone, what they plug it into? And you say, oh, you got a cable? I've got like an old iPhone or something. Do you have any cables literally to see how many cables they have in the ass? They're like trick people into telling you how many cables they've saved without telling you you're doing a study on this?
Geoff Wilson [00:38:22] Part of my research ethics is like going a little warning flag, at least I don't know if I should do it that way. Also now I'm having a post-Saddam life going. I should have that answer right now of exactly how to do that study. I mean, I think there's still ways to do, though, like I mean, the general ethnography kind of studies. You are just kind of saying, hey, I want to follow you around for a day and I just want to see how you use your devices. And in that sense, you're not lying to him, because I think to me, that's kind of an ethical standpoint. No. One you should never lie to about doing. But that's why I like having you on, because I always have to decide versus the researcher said
Guy Thompson [00:39:00] I was pretty sure that there would be a disclaimer in there that we're going to we're going to look at how you use devices and software and just be maybe not too specific about what we're trying to find out, because this is the biggest challenge, right. That people will what you study is always changing based on the fact that you're looking at it closely. If someone said they were going to study how many cables I had and how I use them, I would clean up my cable draw. I'd be like, I don't like the cable was all over my house and I don't even know what this one's for. And I would feel silly about probably how many cables I actually have. And so that's a big challenge to say. Like, how do you study what the consumer is thinking about when they're buying that product? And of course, generally speaking, this isn't actually an issue because you can put more cables in the box, people who just use whatever they want. The issue you have is making sure you can shift as many units of the actual component you're selling. The actual thing, the device, the the cables that attached to it are just an auxiliary thing, but there's still a cost there. And the interesting thing about that is that depending on the different kind of device that you buy, sometimes you don't actually get a cable with it at all. The amount of times that you will buy a monitor and there's no HDMI cable, there'll be a power cable, but they might not be anything else. So depending on the price point you're at, you open that box and there'll be a display. People can eat it that way and actually might connect it. The way I write. It's all kind of thrown in based on how much that you're willing to pay. And generally speaking, people are going to be driven on price to buy the cheapest thing possible, open the box and then complain. There's no cables in there. So you get stuck in this permanent load of bad feedback because people said there's no cables in the box. And like, I don't want to send you like five dollars with the cables, with a fifty nine dollar monitor because, you know, you've probably got cables in your house already. So it's the chicken and the egg thing. It getting bad feedback for bad user experience because you didn't put cables in the box, but lowering your sustainability targets because you've given away three cables with every monitor that people didn't need,
Geoff Wilson [00:40:56] which is I mean, there's definitely a few points I need to hit there. So before to that last point ahead, I want to go back to steps, though, because you were still asking how would you research it? And I think one of your ideas was good, though, of, you know, go to the stores, let's say you work for. Well, I think that one of your ideas was actually good. I got like, one good idea, right? Yeah. No, seriously, like like you said, I really like that idea of go to the store, go where people are buying the things. And when you see somebody going to purchase it, have a look at what they're asking you about. What are they asking you so you can be observing in that store in partnership with that store or whoever it might be, and seeing, well, what are they asking about? Maybe you have a chance to ask them questions in the moment to see what they're actually shopping for, because one of the biggest indicators of what people are wanting is to actually see what are they actually doing. So in the sense they are actually shopping for a product, possibly they came and going, I'm going to buy an iPhone today, but I want to know if this is iPhone, have the audio Jack in it. And so you're getting that feedback directly from them and that's seeing their actual purchase behavior because they've got their credit card ready. So there's that. The other side, though, that I thought about, sadly, it didn't come to me immediately, but it's always diaries. Diary studies are always another good one where basically you are kind of putting it a little bit of subjectiveness to see if people keep up with it. But you give a participant a task basically, you know, over the next week, I want you to write down every time you plug your phone in or you plug in X device or plug in any device. Tell me what cable you used. What room were you in? Was that cable already ready? So kind of a standard journal, almost like a fill in the blank journal that they write down that way. After a week's time, you don't have to be at their house. But as long as they keep up with it and you incentivize them to keep up with it, they'll write down how they used it, whether they used, you know, what other quirks do they noticed that day. So if you write it, get enough and you execute it well enough, you should be able to get a lot of good feedback there. And you can give it to a lot of people at once. Right. You don't have to be the one researcher and everybody's household because it's very time consuming to do that. Very expensive, very hard to align with people's life. But these diary studies, that's basically unmoderated in that sense. People are out doing their thing. So you can have 50 of them at once concurrently. Now, back to back to your last point, though. You know, talking about will do one to five to. And cables, one for each type in the package, because people think he didn't include enough, the one thing that's kind of reminded me since the beginning of all this is one of the fallacies and biases of working wherever you are and especially, let's say, age with age, you will have accumulated more of these devices. And that's one of the biggest biases as we go. Well, you know, and we're in the corporate boardrooms wherever we are doing some pitch and we go, well, everybody's got cables. But because you're thinking about you, you're thinking about yourself instead of going, oh, wait a minute, you know? Well, I looked at my 13 year old niece and she just got her first phone. She's got multiple phones. That's 13 year olds. They felt like everything under the sun. But still, the point remains, right? It could be some child. Maybe they're six years old or whatever age kids are getting phones now. And that kid, that might be their first cable, granted, you could say, well, their parents or the guardians might have had multiple cables and they've got plenty for them already. But I guess that's one of the big things to watch out for is you've got to think about that first time kind of user. Maybe it's somebody who actually hadn't had the money to ever afford anything like that before. And they've got a device that they were able to buy. Well, they might need that thing. So it's just a consideration in that sense of, yeah, manufacturers, I'm sure, would love to not have to include that cable because that's still things that they have to purchase or produce to put in there. It takes more packaging space. If they could get rid of that hell, they could just sell you just the phone and for them would be a lot cheaper.
Guy Thompson [00:44:36] Absolutely. Yeah.
Geoff Wilson [00:44:37] But yeah, you have the problem of can people use it, especially in who are the who's the market that you're going for and maybe this packaging options, maybe it is that of here's just the phone or here's the phone plus the earbuds plus the wall charger plus the cigaret adapter. And all those different aspects to it seem to have some marketing abilities there.
Guy Thompson [00:44:56] So what we've been discussing this topic, I think I started to realize something I hadn't really thought about before, is that you and I are kind of been around technology for a while. Right? We're kind of we're pretty much nerds and we've used a lot of technology over a long period of time. And so you think about when we were kids growing up, to a certain extent, computers and electronic devices were relatively fringe that were being used by more nerdy kids. Right. We were into this technology where neither one of us was out playing football and just having a good time outside. We were actually playing with these kinds of devices. Now you a market for consumer electronic devices, literally everyone. So when we're actually talking about the process of plugging in a device, we're talking about it from the point of view with plugged in hundreds of devices over decades and a new consumer, for example, plugging in a phone will just look at the phone, look at the cable and see if it plugs in. And if it doesn't, they'll grab a different cable. They won't necessarily understand what the protocol is. They won't understand the form factor. They'll just be like, does it fit? Oh, yes. That's the one that goes in my phone, like and that's it. And you think about that from the point of view of a monitor cable. There'll be people who have gone to work for years at a corporation and never plugged the monitor in at work and just always had a laptop at home. So they've never gone through the process and someone else set up their TV. So if you see what cable does your monitor used to connect to your computer, they'll be like, I don't know, it's plugged in the back. And so the process of trying to work out which cable use is actually one of trial and error, whereas we would look at the port, will look at the cable, we know exactly what we're looking for and we can go to their cable drill and find it because we know we saved like five of those just in case
Geoff Wilson [00:46:39] I literally can. I'm going to take a picture of that for like Instagram for this this podcast, and I'm going to take a picture of my cable tour.
Guy Thompson [00:46:46] So I think what we're seeing now is this sort of not only cable interplay, they will continue to get more complicated and different and we have more and different ones. But the absorption and the market of what a new consumer is, of electronic devices, of phones and TVs and laptops and all these different devices, is probably more and more people who haven't necessarily had them before or and may be upgrading to a device they had from ten years ago. So we will be on an upgrade path. It's a lot quicker, a lot more rapid. And your new consumers of devices may be upgrading a phone from five years ago, a laptop from ten years ago. So there they will definitely need all the cables in the box because they haven't acquired as many devices to just have them on hand. So I think that's part of the the reason the more cables in the box mode has been there, that that most of you consumers of devices now are probably newer consumers of devices versus people who've got a lot of them hanging around the house that they can already use. So that would be something I'd think about. In terms of the consumer for your product, are they actually very, very technically savvy or are they actually still getting up to speed with new devices because they're a new consumer?
Geoff Wilson [00:47:53] And what I like about that is it can apply to practically anything. You can just strip out everything we said about cables and reinserting a new word and the same kind of idea applies.
Guy Thompson [00:48:02] Absolutely. Well, umm, Geoff, I think we connected really well on this topic hahaha.
Geoff Wilson [00:48:08] Ughhhhhhh. Yeah, I mean, we were uhh... we were plugged in the entire way.
Guy Thompson [00:48:11] Absolutely. Switched on and fully committed haha. So, yeah, yeah. The ideas were just, you know, transferring back and forwards at high speed. It feels like USB 1.1. It's great hahaha.
Geoff Wilson [00:48:22] You know what? I'm glad that we made it the entire way through without actually referencing USP 1 and 2A's. You have to flip them over back and forth and we're not going to haha.
Guy Thompson [00:48:32] It's pointless and we didn't even, you know, cover, SCSI or Serial Ports or any peripherals of any kind, it's sort of... we are definitely in the 21st century now.
Geoff Wilson [00:48:41] Yeah, that's... is that where we are? [Guy: I hope so.] Anyway, hahaha, it's been a long year... Anyways! So...
Guy Thompson [00:48:51] It's been a long decade haha. Good lord.
Geoff Wilson [00:48:56] We just entered this decade too, I think? I'm pretty sure. Yeah. It's a one on there. Kind of like...
Guy Thompson [00:49:04] It's going to feel like the longest decade ever haha. You're like, "When did 2020 start?" Sometime in 1995." Hahaha.
Geoff Wilson [00:49:09] "It's been going for me for 20 something years..." Anyways with that... Chaotic exit haha. I Like it. This is what... this is what getting back after a few months feels like.
Guy Thompson [00:49:22] It looks like that cable drawer haha; it's just all over the place.
Geoff Wilson [00:49:25] Oh, that's perfect with that. And with that, folks, thank you for listening to this episode, and I hope you'll notice a few new things next time you're, you know, picking up your cables and plugging stuff in as well. To see examples of what we were talking about today and to keep this conversation going. You know, we mentioned a few times, hey, hit us up with these... What your cable drawer looks like. I don't mind getting picture after picture of people's cable draws; it'd actually be quite fun to see. So with that, you can find and follow us practically on all social media platforms, except for TikTok! ...for now hahaha. You can find us that @EverydayExpPod or myself @geoffwilsonHCD. Please consider subscribing to the show on your favourite podcasting app. And as always, just remember, you don't have to have a fancy job title to start noticing and improving the everyday experiences wherever you work.
Post-credits
Guy Thompson [00:50:38] Sorry, was... was that rant too long? I felt like it was...
Geoff Wilson [00:50:40] No, that's fine. That's fine.
Guy Thompson [00:50:40] It's good? Okay, cool. I got lost. I don't want us to talk about it haha.
