Innovation Gone Awry: #1, Where Less Would Have Been More

I really like innovative products. However, sometimes the engineers go a bit overboard and indulge in what I call BWC Design -- BWC stands for "Because We Can". There are cases where capability does not lead to improved utility or usability, and today's example is one of them. We bought a new cordless phone system this weekend. It is (deep breath) the "AT&T 2.4 GHz Cordless Telephone/Answering System E2727B". (No extra marketing dollars wasted on product naming on this one!) The E2727B has two features that I find innovative. One of those features, however, falls into the BWC category. Feature one: The extension handset doesn't need to be plugged into a phone line. While the technical sophistication behind this innovation is virtually non-existent, the convenience of being able to place the extension handset anywhere within six feet of an outlet is very nice. Kudos to AT&T! Feature 2A (the cool part): The answer machine part of the E2727B automatically sets the time stamp by using the Caller ID information on an incoming call. That is really nice -- no more pushing and holding the button while setting the machine for "Monday, May Twenty-Second, Nine Twenty Six AM". I set the thing up, called it on my cell phone and *Voila!* -- the time stamp is set! Feature 2B (the uncool part): Before I describe the BWC feature, I would like to mention that this answering machine holds 15 minutes of messages. Now here's the feature: the time stamp includes the year. That's right -- it says "Monday, May Twenty-Second, Nine Twenty-Six AM, Two Thousand Six". At first, this seems pretty harmless, if a bit silly. I don't collect an archive of my incoming phone messages ("Hi, it's me. Give me a call when you get a chance.") such that I need to remember what year the message is from. And even if I were so inclined, I only can collect 15 minutes of these archival recordings. (Maybe they should have included a USB cable so I can connect the machine to my computer, and off load the messages. Sort of like a digital camera. No, put in a memory card instead. Wait maybe a wireless connection to my PC! But I get carried away.) The irritating part is that, in order to make the auto-time-stamp-setting feature work properly, you must make sure that the year is set correctly after a power outage. Otherwise, the day function is wrong. So while my phone will properly set itself for the remainder of this year, after that I will lose the convenience, or suffer through day-of-the-week integrity issues. In this case, I think that sacrificing the day-of-the-week function would have been a big gain. Perhaps some usability testing should have been done -- who keeps messages for more than a day? Who forgets the date such that they need both the date and the day of the week to be announced. For the AT&T E2727B design team, I recommend that "less is more". Less info, more convenience. P.S. And the engineering money could be spent on a better name.