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I believe the correct answer is that nobody designs that shit. Nobody at all – it’s just engineers cramming more features into each revised model.

Thanks for finally asking this question. Can you believe this stuff? All the flashing lights! Who buys it? What are they thinking? I know my 8 year old would like it, but only to pretend he’s flying an F-22,

“Honey…this one has more buttons!” “You’re right dear. Look how cool the orange and black looks too!” “5 discs? That’s incredible! Oh and it comes with a remote!” “You’re right. Our complete Rick Astley collection could fit in there and we’d never have to change it out!” “Let’s buy it.” “I love you.” “No…I love you…you have awesome taste!”

I went to Best Buy the other day to buy an alarm clock. I had to simply refuse to buy anything there. I love my apartment, decorate it, keep it clean, and take pride in it. There was simply nothing there that I would allow into my home. Hideous hideous garbage.

more lights and buttons means more features. more features is better.

this is how japanese consumer electronics works. get used to it.

I really hate it when I see products with tons of stickers on them, promoting their features.

I’ve seen bikes with stickers bragging about 21 GEARS and LOOK ! CALIPER BRAKES !

I’ve seen laptop computers that say BUILT IN CAMERA

I’ve seen those radio things all the time with their DOLBY DIGITAL SURROUND SOUND 8 .A MILLION or whatever

Those stickers always shout to me “we know our product is cheap crap so we’re gonna try and convince you to buy it with features!”

@Joe Sak: Even better are the people that leave the stickers on. Everyone needs to know about my 5x Digital Zoom!

Much more to the point… who buys it?

This design sits in a long lineage of successfully selling products, all designed along similar lines over the last 20 years or so.

A designer who designs something that sells… well, there’s a discussion to be had there perhaps?

Took me a few seconds to figure out what that thing is. If there’s so many flashing lights and sounds that your potential customer doesn’t even know what they may be buying, I think you have a big problem.

How old is this thing? It has a cassette recorder, unless I’m wrong about which devices need “auto reverse.”

Maybe the design appeals to folks who still make mix tapes.

At the same time, the massive front panel complexity and disorganization is part of what makes 80’s ghetto blaster boom boxes so charming. Maybe this will go for the big bucks as VINTAGE RETRO L @@K on eBay in 20 years? This one does feature some pretty unfortunate layout, though.

And to agree with “someone” up there, I have indeed read that some east Asian countries like complicated-looking electronics.

This explains why Bose is so successful selling their gear. People are willing to pay a premium for simple.

I’ll be honest; my daughter would love that stereo. Because it looks big and complicated and feature-rich. For her, it wouldn’t have to be feature-rich (because she wouldn’t know how to use the stuff anyway), she’d just want it to look that way.

Re: Bose, people are also willing to pay a premium for overhyped marketing of crap audio. BOSE stands for Buy Other Stereo Equipment.

It’s a coffeemachine!

Even wierder; this type of thing was what people had to accept before the Web came around. Go to local store, look at equipment, choose one. Hopefully big box stores will pay attention to design some day…

Oh man. Love your choice of description! Get to the point :-)

The funniest part about “boomboxes” like these are when you look inside and notice all the hardware is in the lowest 10%... the only reason they are so big is to fit tons of buttons on the front.

I won’t buy it but I really love the look.

It’s the same as for tuned cars, they look awesome but I won’t buy them.

Guess I’m not in the good target.

It reminds me vaguely of HAL :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

The closer it looks to a transformer the better I guess

The product obviuosly has a market, just you are not part of it. Get over it.

Does anyone remember the days when Sony gear showed a certain respect for ergonomics and human factors? Back in the day, you could feel your way around a Walkman or remote control pretty easily if it were made by Sony. I remember the receiver I had in college, circa 1993, that had a very clear display, enough buttons to support what it did, and it was just obvious. Its replacement, purchased two years ago, is total crap. Every button does ten things and there are menus to do stuff that would seem like common sense. It’s horrible.

@steve ames: Naaa … this thing doesn’t have vectored thrust or an inertia guidance system.

Besides, the TR-3 is MUCH more exciting. 5300 MPH !!

Not only does this musical Inspector Gadget have too many buttons, look at how tiny some of them are. Makes iDrive look civilized.

Almost.

@Keith: COTD !

This design sits in a long lineage of successfully selling products, all designed along similar lines over the last 20 years or so.

I still have the now-ancient Sony FH-BB66CD and it looks nothing like this. It looks like component audio (which is usually a matte black, one knob type of deal), only smaller. It’s got a component-like, simple, beautiful equalizer. It still works beautifully.

So it’s certainly not purely a Sony lineage problem.

The ‘gloss’ trend in product design is pretty disturbing. It’s as if our society puts a tremendous emphasis on glamor and distraction rather than substance or clarity.

(Granted, not all glossy products lack substance. For a surprising number of products, however, that’s the only thing of note or merit.)

Good design is honest:

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/wave_systems/wms/index.jsp

Contrast that to a typical Sony Blu-Ray player…looks like to hard buttons (upper right) and maybe 4 touch-screen buttons?

http://akamaipix.crutchfield.com/products/2007/158/h158BDPS500-f-1.jpeg

It looks kind of like a Radio Shack store that stayed out all night drinking and then threw up in the morning.

Do you mount that fucker in the dash of an SUV or something?

The design is perfect because it’s not a sound system but it’s a Transformer.

Music reproduction today is all about convenience and/or bass response. MP3 deletes most of the music that was originally played by the artist. Look at Pioneer receivers from the 70s. The music mattered then.

My guess is that an artist did concept drawings, and a bunch of execs at Sony picked the coolest looking one, assuming that’s the process of designing good products.

I can tell by the giant knob and the shapes. It definitely looks cool on paper, and it looks like concept art I’ve seen around.

Made me think of this little video YouTube: Microsoft Re-Designs the Ipod Packaging.

Do I have to love the white remote? Just checking.

Too bad the boom box isn’t as simple as the remote.

Jason, we’re all eagerly waiting to hear if you managed to win anything! I always have the worst luck with slot machines.

re: Brandan Lennox 29 Oct 08

How old is this thing? It has a cassette recorder, unless I’m wrong about which devices need “auto reverse.”

You have mercury poisoning or a 42” screen or summat? That must be 1-point type!

argh, SELECT /SET!

Sony have a long practice in developing cluttered interfaced. Take their DVD remote controls which usually have about 50 buttons or more.

Even worse some of them have a little switcher on the side to change between controlling DVD or TV, effectively multiplying number of controls to over 100. Madness!

Reminds me of when I simplified my sound gear (kids). All I wanted was a unit with AM/FM, disc player (DVD/CD), a couple line inputs, and stereo or 2.1 . Turns out I was looking for some rather esoteric gear!

Love the blog, love the products, getting really bored with seeing “fuck” and “shit” – guess I’m getting old.

No, it isn’t boredom, it’s disappointment.

Functionally, I’d have to say that it’s an improvement over past designs. AVI outputs on the front for easier plugging in, a single knob for changing both volume and tuning…

The presence of a function button is always upsetting. With that many buttons and a function nob, I shudder at the thought of using the thing.

But it’s much simpler then it looks. There’s no integration between the components, really, it’s just five devices with five sets of controls, all stacked together in one box. So it really does need that many controls.

Well, you probably would have loved the design of the Panasonic TU-HMS3 Harddisk Recorder:

TU-HMS3

Sony reports 72 pct plunge in quarterly profit

<a href=”http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104ap_as_japan_earns_sony.html ”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104ap_as_japan_earns_sony.html

Do you remember the stereos from Koss about 10-15 years ago (at least I think it was Koss). They use to try and make them as complicated and futuristic as possible, and that’s what used to sell them. They were pretty junky, but they looked cool with all kinds of fancy controls. But it sold.

I saw this the other day in the store, I was shocked at how bad it was designed.

Little shocked at the use of language. Searched your blog and noticed you have used the word before.

But it’s got a headphone jack!

Industrial designers?