American consumer technology is sold on the claim that it can be used without instruction, and products are reviewed against it. A device that needs its manual read has failed a test that was applied before it shipped.
Don’t Make Me Think
Steve Krug’s 2000 book on web usability became one of the most widely read American design texts, and the title is the argument. The user should not have to work out how the thing operates.
Bigger, faster, more
Go big or go home. More bang for your buck. Supersize it. Bigger is better.
Four ordinary American phrases, all approving, all about quantity of output. There is no equivalent family of approving phrases about consuming less.
Disposable
An American product category with its own aisle: razors, cameras, cutlery, containers, contact lenses. The word is a selling point rather than a criticism, and what is being sold is the absence of an obligation.
The 2,000-square-foot house
The average new American single-family home has grown substantially since the 1970s while household size has fallen. More space per person, heated and cooled.
Energy Star
The American efficiency label, launched by the EPA in 1992, is voluntary and works by identifying the best performers rather than by setting a floor. The approach is to reward the efficient product rather than to prohibit the inefficient one.
The refill
Free refills on soft drinks and coffee are standard in American restaurants, and portion sizes are a recognised point of international comparison. Abundance is part of what is being sold.
Air conditioning
American buildings are cooled to a degree that visitors routinely find excessive, and the cost is treated as the price of comfort rather than as waste. The output is the temperature. The input is a bill.
The SUV
Light trucks and SUVs make up the great majority of new vehicle sales in the United States, and the shift happened while fuel economy standards were tightening. Given more efficient engines, American buyers bought larger vehicles.
CAFE standards
American fuel economy standards had to be imposed by Congress in 1975, after the oil embargo, because the market was not producing them. Efficiency in American vehicles arrived as regulation rather than as a design value, and it has been contested at every revision since.