This is just another general product review pointing out that the people who make things are stupid...specifically people design products contrary to the needs and wants of the people who need or want to use them. The target product for this post is the LED bicycle lights that are nice a small and convenient to leave on or take off the bike. Over the years I've done egregious harm to my old head and tail lights and so naturally I went on eBay to look to replace them. What I found confused and annoyed me.

Most of the lights I saw for sale of the small form factor that I was looking for advertised to "features" that, in conjuction, make the products horrible.

1) 7 modes of operations: these are different ways the light can blink.

2) one button operation: pushing a button cycles through these modes.

First let me point out that my current lights have three modes (plus the off mode) and I think that's two too many. I only use the simple blinking mode which seems to be the safest; there are also "always on" and "sequential blinking" modes that I never use. The solid light I understand, but the other blinking mode seems completely unnecessary. It occured to me some time ago that it would be more convenient for there to be a switch for the mode and one simple on/off button.

Now the manufacturers have decreased the value of these products my making the user cycle through seven presses of the button between uses. Lame. And what could these other blinking modes possibly offer that anybody could care about? Perhaps they should offer different models with different blinkers if adding a switch is too big a deal and there really is a demand for blinkers that match people's ringtones or whatever. I don't know what the deal is, but I sure wish that I could by a one-button, one-mode LED bike light that is either off or blinking.

I imagine that there are plenty of people out there who, like me, see the value of keeping things simple and useful instead of adding features to reduce functionality. This is just one example of this principle, further violations of the basic principles of functional design are not hard to find and will certainly come up in future posts. In the meantime, if any of you can recommend some good little bike lights then I welcome the suggestion.