Sharp tools

Technological tools are often “sharp”. When they fail, they often fail unexpectedly. Users are surprised by this and they “bleed”.

One solution is to design the tools with “soft edges.” They could alert the users before failure, or degrade performance, so the failure is delayed or avoided.

On the other hand, what users can do is to research the failures. Users could study known failures on the Internet. Users could stress test the sharp tool on purpose.