They could make toys better. They could make them stronger, less prone to wear and damage. They could make them safer, with fewer dangerous small parts and fewer toxic materials. They could perform more comprehensive testing. They could make toys better. But they don’t.
Christmas Presents
Once they have a few Christmas seasons under their belt, most kids learn to politely glance at a card or briefly hold up new clothes they have received to show a modicum of appreciation. Most kids also cannot help but show their true enthusiasm when pulling back the first corner of wrapping paper reveals a toy. The toys immediately become beloved and cherished gifts from the first moment they are revealed. Cards and clothes get stacked in a pile; toys are immediately put to work. The American Girl doll joins a tea party. The bright red Hot Wheels Ferrari races across the floor in the kitchen between the feet of the adults preparing a meal. The watch is strapped to the wrist, where it remains for a solid week.
Toys Break Easily
When my children were young, it was not unusual during the days and weeks after Christmas for toys to break. Some toys needed repair within minutes of unwrapping, while others lasted many days. A few sturdy stalwarts lasted long enough to be handed down to a sibling. Why weren’t all the toys made that sturdy? Why were some made of flimsy materials that easily broke in the hands of an industrious four-year-old?
Toy designers and manufacturers have a choice. They could make better toys. They do not because we told them so. Not in so many words, but the result was the same. We consumers often choose lower price over higher quality.
Imagine a toy seller who produces two models of the same toy. The first model is made of inexpensive materials, with little attention to durability. Costs are reduced further by slimming down the thickness of each part and minimizing the number of fasteners by using an inexpensive sealing process. The result is a fragile toy that is not easily repairable. The second model is made to last, with high-quality materials. The designer pays attention to likely wear patterns and beefs up the sections where weakness might otherwise lead to breakage. More expensive fasteners are used, enabling the toy to be repaired should any problems occur.
Despite the contrasting designs, from the outside, the two toys appear somewhat similar. A Christmas shopper in a hurry would not spot the higher quality of the second toy. The only clear and immediately obvious difference is the price. Although a few astute shoppers may notice the difference simply by the heft of the toy, and others may assume that the higher price toy is indeed better, the majority choose the lower cost.
Towards the end of the shopping season, the first model has sold out, yet stacks of the second remain. The implications to the toymaker for next year are clear: make low-cost toys, even if the quality is poor.
Why don’t they make toys better? It isn’t some insidious toy conspiracy. It is because we consumers won’t pay for the higher quality. You get what you pay for. We choose to pay little, so we get little. Our economy generates a huge data set characterizing consumer product preferences. Those purchases tilt the test data heavily toward cheaper. We might intend “cheaper” to be less expensive, but in essence, we have selected “cheaper” In terms of lower quality. You get what you pay for.
Communicating Quality
Whether the product is a toy, microwave, phone, or table, the consumer drives much of the market signal for lower quality. However, the engineer, manufacturer, marketer, and retailer are not absolved of responsibility in the drive towards lower quality. To choose higher quality, reliability, and safety, the consumer must be able to identify those qualities accurately and quantify them to a reasonable degree. Clear and consistent product communication is not easy to obtain across an industry. However, we have an existing example of strong communication in one particular product industry: packaged food.
In 1990, the US Congress passed the “Nutrition Labeling and Education Act” requiring food products to be labeled with accurate identification of ingredients. The European Union passed similar requirements in 2016. Consistent labels quantifying nutrition enabled consumers to make fair comparisons between foods so that they could purchase the best value for their money. Over time, this information has driven the market so that lower fat, lower sugar, higher nutrition became more common and thus more affordable. It is not a perfect system. We still see unfortunate economic pressures that limit the very poor to rather unhealthy food choices. Nevertheless, accurate labeling has improved the overall food production system.
We should apply the lesson of food labeling to technological products in general. Christians should be particularly eager to improve the way product information communicates safety and reliability because such information is a way to love and care for our neighbor. Christian engineers in a position to influence regulation can advocate for better consumer choice.
Furthermore, regulation is not the only way to improve communication of a product’s quality, reliability, safety, utility. Reviews can help. Customer reviews are a good start, though they rarely provide a direct comparison of alternatives. Review articles by qualified people or organizations are better, as they often benchmark similar products head-to-head.
Every Technological Design Requires Trade-offs
Toys are not the only technological products that require give-and-take design choices. Every physical device we design and manufacture requires a trade-off between cost and reliability. Extra design time to develop clever products that last longer implicitly adds cost. Extra or better materials to make structures stronger implicitly add cost. Furthermore, balancing cost and reliability is just one trade-off. Trade-offs are implicit in every engineering design, requiring an equilibrium between multiple goals that each appear to be good, yet more of the one requires less of the other.
Most designs will require an array of trade-offs. We trade weight (and indirectly safety) for higher gas mileage in automobiles. We trade early access for thoroughness of clinical testing in developing pharmaceutical drugs. We determine priorities for the competing goods of aesthetics, performance, reliability, safety, recyclability, and more.
Of all these trade-offs, it may seem that safety should always be the top priority, tipping the scales all the way to complete reliability.
Trading Safety
I once asked students in an engineering course to consider how much rigor one ought to use in designing electronics for an entertainment device such as earbuds. I then asked them to compare that to the rigor one ought to use in designing a medical instrument such as a device to monitor premature infant vital signs.
Some students thought there should be no difference in rigor. They thought that Christians should do their best to produce the most excellent and safe designs, regardless of the intended use. This position has some scriptural support. Colossians 3:23 tells us “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men.” No matter where we find ourselves, every occupation is worthy of our best efforts as an offering to the Lord.
Other students indicated that the preemie monitor should be designed with utmost care and much more attention, compared to the earbuds. This position also has some scriptural support. Philippians 4:8 tells us “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Spending more time on a more noble technology is one way to implement Paul’s directive.
Can you go overboard on safety? Is there ever an acceptable risk? I believe so. Consider two examples. First, look at the common nail hammer. It is designed to pound nails into wood. This purpose leads to a design with a hard striking surface, a relatively heavy weight to provide momentum when the striking surface is swung, and a long handle to harness the centrifugal force of that swing into a powerful impact on the head of the nail. The design is appropriate to the need. The design is also deadly. That same powerful impact on a person’s head will kill. We could alleviate that risk by reducing the weight and softening the striking surface, shortening the handle to reduce the swinging force, and so forth. The resulting pillow on a stubby stick would no longer be able to kill, but it wouldn’t be able to pound nails either.
A second example is choosing the acceptable risk in automobiles. We could make cars safer by adding steel plating to protect passengers during a crash. However, the extra weight drastically lowers gas mileage. We could make cars even more robust during accidents by eliminating fragile windows. However, the lack of visibility would make driving much less enjoyable and might well increase the chance of accidents. Eventually, as we added more and more bulk, the car would no longer fit in the lane or in a residential garage. All the extra material would push the price of the safer automobile beyond the reach of most budgets.
Balancing Act
Good designs are a balance of competing goals. If the balance is distorted, favoring one goal to the exclusion of others, the resulting product may be dysfunctional. Proper function depends on meeting multiple goals simultaneously.
Not only are products the result of a trade-off, but the engineering design process itself is also a trade-off. The old adage “better, faster, cheaper -- pick any two” is a reflection of the balance between the scope, schedule, and cost of a project. Does this mean that one must always accept less of one goal to achieve more of another? Not necessarily. Sometimes we find a clever new way to achieve both lower cost and higher quality, e.g., by reducing waste. Sometimes we find an innovation that lets us achieve both environmental stewardship and corporate profit, e.g., by reusing and recycling. Sometimes we find a way to make a part both lighter and stronger, e.g., by using composite materials. Such wise combinations are one way to pursue designs that are excellent and praiseworthy.
