Meh. If you read The Design of Everyday Things and then look around, you see so many faults with the UI of physical things, even some which have been around for more than a century.
A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."
I think many of these problems aren't caused by someone unable to construct a good UI, but that the manufacturer's other goals happen to be opposed to good UI. UI is just not high on the priority list and is inadvertently trampled on.
E.g. clamshell/tamper-proof packaging is awful (I like calling it "customer-proof"), but the goal to reduce theft is a much higher priority than making it easier to open.
I highly recommend The Design of Everyday Things to everyone I know who is designing any kind of user interface, whether machinery, houses, or software.
I believe that until there is some effective, easy, and universally-accepted metric of UI quality, there will be little to differentiate good designers from poor. ("Our UI meets UIQC Class 1 Standards", or in a specification, "All user screens must score level 96 or better on the UIQC test", or some such thing.)
I don't believe user interfaces could be evaluated in such a quantitative and useful way, as you describe. You could slap some number in there, but that doesn't make it useful.
Bear in mind that the UI itself is just a part of the equation, alongside the user and the usage context. Two identical UIs (evaluated at about the same score with the hypothetical UIQC) can perform radically different in the hands of the end-user, because the users and their contexts are different.
That's not the building bridges level engineering that the parent talked about.
In fact, any designer/CAD hack in some factory can get his hands in building packages or other physical items, so the situation is mostly the same as the one the parent criticizes. In most countries you don't need to have an engineering degree to design a package container, kitchenware or a toy car -- at best an "industrial designer" degree will do.
Some packaging may be designed in this manner, but that's bad (or simply lazy) design. Packaging can, and should, serve the interests of the manufacturer, retailer, and consumer equally well.
Some packaging is theft-resistant, but can be 'unlocked' by the retailer at POS. I'm thinking, in particular, of razor blades in the UK. Is that the best compromise?
I assume you're talking about spider wraps [1] - a wire that goes around the box and connects back to a little lock.
As a consumer, I don't like these because the lock portion often obscures an important piece of information on the box. They also don't work for packaging that's designed to be manipulated on the shelf, e.g. boxes with a magnetically attached book-style cover that let you examine the product or read more information by opening it [1].
They're not ideal for retailers, either. They detract from the the aesthetic appeal of the packaging - reducing sales - and increase labor costs by adding extra steps (and, thus, time) for employees stocking shelves and working at the POS.
EAS systems (the little RF tags that are deactivated by placing them on a pad at the POS) are probably the best things going right now for passive deterrence, but they have their own set of problems (e.g. false positives).
Lets say conservatively that 70% of Americans open at least one package a year, equalling 223,230,000 packages opened. 6,500 injuries is 0.0029%. Not bad I think.
0.0029% for injuries that require an emergency room visit, not injuries at all. Let's go for a conservative, 100:1 ratio of minor cuts vs injuries that make you want to spend a bunch of money on doctors, and we see that it's pretty darned dangerous. Dangerous enough that at work, we have mandatory training on how to open different kinds of packages safely!
That said, the state of blisters has improved, precisely because people complained about how easy it is to get injured with the older, plastic on plastic blisters that require either heavy duty scissors or a box cutter, and leave behind very sharp edges.
You've probably been downvoted (although, not be me) for using the term 'idiocy' which is a really unfair and derogatory accusation. I've cut myself on packaging before, definitely. I've probably done it in the past year. I am not 'an idiot'. ER visits could be for a number of indirect reasons; blood disorders that could prevent blood from clotting affect at least 6,500 people in the US. Just because the injury you're imagining wouldn't be serious to you, doesn't mean others are 'idiots'.
>* I've cut myself on packaging before, definitely. I've probably done it in the past year. I am not 'an idiot'.*
Well, I've cut myself too. That's not the problem.
It's the E.R level injury though that I say implies some incompetence.
And if they have "blood disorders that could prevent blood from clotting", they shouldn't mindlessly be using knives and other sharp objects to open packaging.
A good example is packaging: "The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that attempts to open packaging caused about 6,500 emergency room visits in the U.S. in 2004."