EDWARD DE BONO'S MESSAGES - 12th June 2000

Design!

If you were at the EVCA symposium which I addressed in Paris a few days ago, then I would re-direct you to another site which is more limited but more specific: edwarddebono.com. There you will find material of direct interest to the investment community - but not of interest to others.

As I was leaving on this current rip, I found that my watch had stopped. So I left it behind to have the battery changed. At the airport there was this kiosk devoted solely to watches. There must have been about four hundred  different watches (probably a great deal more). Only one of the four hundred had a face that was easy to read. They may have done wonderful things like timing a lap to a hundredth of a second at a depth of fifty metres. They may have been incredibly accurate etc. etc. But at the end of the day the faces of these watches were indistinct, symbolic, clever-clever - everything except easy to read.

Now the purpose of a watch is to "tell the time - accurately". There are watches which do actually tell you the time literally when you ask them. Watches do marvelously at the "accurate bit" but very poorly at letting you know the time. With most watches if the light is poor or you have a few seconds of glance, it is impossible to tell the time. You may need to go through a learning curve first - but who wants to do that?

You would think that having a face that was easy to read would be a design priority. Apparently not. It may be that for most people having a watch that is easy to read is not a priority. Some people are actually old enough to need reading glasses. Should a watch be capable of being read without reading glasses. Apparently not.

Are watches ever put through a readability test?

Sometimes the absurdities of the design world are so very obvious.

In the end I found the single watch with a readable face. It was an inexpensive Sekonda watch. In fact it was identical to the one I had left behind. I had originally bought the first one for the same reason: readability. I was not looking for the same model but I was brought back to it as the only readable watch (in my view). 

Edward de Bono nmt
11th June 2000
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