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Vehicle headlights: Jennifer Stockburger has noted that, when Consumer Reports started testing headlights, engineers at auto manufacturers thanked CR for giving them the ammunition they needed to force their employers to let them to engineer better headlights; previously, they would often lose the argument to designers who wanted nicer looking but less effective headlights since making cars safer by desiging better headlights is a hard sell because there's no business case, but making cars score higher on Consumer Reports reviews is an easy sell because that impacts sales numbers

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Vehicle headlights: Jennifer Stockburger has noted that, when Consumer Reports started testing headlights, engineers at auto manufacturers thanked CR for giving them the ammunition they needed to force their employers to let them to engineer better headlights; previously, they would often lose the argument to designers who wanted nicer looking but less effective headlights since making cars safer by desiging better headlights is a hard sell because there's no business case, but making cars score higher on Consumer Reports reviews is an easy sell because that impacts sales numbers
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Dan Luu (danluu@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 08:26:13 JST Dan Luu
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Reminds me of this story where automotive engineers had to fight designers to get headlights that illuminated the road. They were actually losing the fight until Consumer Reports started testing headlights for function, which created enough of a stink that engineers were able to push for headlights that actually work over headlights that follow modern design principles: https://danluu.com/why-benchmark/
And sure, #notalldesigners, but this is a problem that goes back decades across multiple industries.

In conversation about 10 months ago from mastodon.social permalink