Casting a Spotlight on Importance of Use Cases

A few months ago, we started experiencing some problems with the cable box in our bedroom. It had served diligently for seven years there, and who knows how many years in other places prior to its arrival in our little abode. The cable people came out, examined it, and determined that it was an ancient relic. They provided us with a much newer model, and once again, all was well.

The first evening with the new cable box, however, I discovered a problem: the clock display on the front of the unit was so bright in the darkness of the room, that it cast a blue-green glow throughout the room. I like the room to be dark when I sleep, but the eerie  aurora-like glow of the digits bothered me.

 I spent some time the next day seeing if there was some function in the new cable box that allows for dimming the brightness of the clock. I spent 15 minutes or so searching for such a feature, and unable to find one, I gave up. Instead, I came up with a low-tech solution: each night before going to bed, I block the clock using a paperback book (usually a well-worn copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens).

This low-tech method has been in place for a few months now, and it got me thinking about the importance of use cases. Lots of people have TVs in their bedrooms, and presumably, many of these TVs are connected to cable boxes. It seems reasonable to assume that some people like darkness when they sleep. That said, it was clear that this was not a use case considered when testing out this cable box model. It has all kinds of cool features, but it lacks the simple ability to dim the clock display.

I try to keep this in mind at the day job when I am the one making decisions about what features to include or exclude from a particular product or system. Considering all of the reasonable use cases (and to me, the brightness of the display is perfectly reasonable, we see it in most major operating systems today) helps to make better products.

ETA: A commenter on my Facebook page pointed to a possible solution. I looked at it and discovered I was looking in the wrong place for the setting I wanted. Now, when the box is off, the clock is off, too! Thanks, Ben Wilson!