On a sort of impulse while picking up some other supplies at Staples, I bought a paper shredder yesterday (the Staples M5 Mailmate Shredder, about $90). I’ve been collecting things to shred since my old shredder died about 4 years, so there was quite a backlog of shredding to do. I set out to shred it all last night and it was oddly satisfying.
Operation is simple. You turn it on and start feeding it paper. If you try to jam too much in, there are two buttons to help free up the blades (”FWD” and “REV”). This happened a couple of times over the course of an hour, but for the most part it lived up to its “12 sheet” rating.
Oh No!
Then, all of the sudden (and near the end of my pile), it got really stuck on a 10-page stack of pages, half-way shredded. The “REV” light was blinking angrily at me, and no amount of pressing the buttons or turning the thing off and on would allow me to free the pages. I struggled with it for a few minutes, then I started to rationalize. If I had bought this thing 4 years ago, it would have been chugging along all this time. As obnoxious as it is, electronics these days are built for obsolescence after a few years use, so 4 years isn’t a bad run. Or maybe it was my fault — if I had only been gentler with it, putting in just 8 sheets instead of 10, I would still be happily shredding.
But, no! It should still work. Maybe the “manual” would have some helpful info on clearing jams that I hadn’t considered. I put manual in quotes, because it really consists of one page of tiny print, translated into many languages. As it turns out, the manual did have some useful information. I know shredders have a tendency to overheat, and I thought I had been careful to pause every now and then to let it cool down, but I guess not careful enough. According to the manual, after 8 minutes of continuous use, it just stops working and the REV light blinks. Turn it off (and unplug it) for 80 minutes and it should magically start working again. Thankfully, this was true! I’m now back in operation, and don’t have another expensive, oversize paperweight in my life.
Fixing the Design
So what’s the problem? If this had happened sometime weeks, months, or years after buying the shredder, I surely would have thrown out (or maybe even shredded) the manual long ago, probably without reading it. It’s pretty likely that I wouldn’t think to wait 80 minutes and everything would be fine, and I’d assume it was broken for good.
I know that every extra component adds cost, but the big expense here was the sensor that they sprung for to detect the overheating problem. For another few cents they easily could have added one more LED next to a label that read “Too hot, wait” or “Overheat” or something similar. Actually, they didn’t need to add any cost, since there’s no good reason to have an LED behind the REV button for normal operation. So, even though the shredder does a good job of what it’s supposed to do (shred stuff), with just a little more attention to the interaction design they could vastly improve the overall experience of using the product.
One More Thing
The manual is really worth the read. I also learned that despite having a picture of some guy happily shredding his unopened junk mail on the product box, you shouldn’t shred envelopes, because the sticky material can hurt the shredder. Beware of the marketing department!
