Reading Comprehension

A cause of fatal mining accidents was once the peculiar configuration of
the controls on the trams shuttling along mineshafts. Each tram had a
steering wheel that rose straight up from the floor, with a brake pedal on
one side and an accelerator pedal on the other. There was no room to
turn the tram around, so to reverse direction the driver simply took a
seat on the other side of the steering wheel, whereupon what had been
the brake became the accelerator, and vice versa. While this may sound
ingenious, it proved disastrous.

Many people set an electric burner on high thinking that it will heat up
faster that way: they have the mental model of a gas stove, whose knobs
actually do increase the heat's intensity. On an electric stove, however,
the knob is merely a switch that turns on the burner and then turns it off
when a certain temperature is reached.

Consider the humble wristwatch, which has been transformed into a
kind of wrist-mounted personal computer, with a digital display and a
calculator pad whose buttons are too small to be pressed by a human
fingertip. By replacing the watch's conventional stem-winding mechanism
with a mystifying arrangement of tiny buttons, the manufacturers created
a watch that was hard to reset.

One leading manufacturer was distressed to discover that a line of its
particularly advanced digitals was being returned as defective by the
thousands, even though the watches actually worked perfectly well.
Further investigation revealed that they were coming back soon after
purchase and thereafter in two large batches-in the spring and the fall,
when the time changed.

Charles Mauro, a consultant in New York City, is a prominent member
of a branch of engineering generally known as ergonomics, or humanfactors-
the only field specifically addressing the question of product
usability. Mauro was brought in to provide some help to the watch
manufacturer, which was experiencing what Mauro calls the "•complexity
problem.

With complexity defined as a fundamental mismatch between
the demands of a technology and the capabilities of its user, the term
nicely captures the essence of our current technological predicament.
A growing number of technologists speak of user-centred design as a
means of scrupulously maintaining the user's perspective from start to
finish, adding technology only where necessary. When confronted by
some mystifying piece of high-tech gadgetry, consumers naturally feel
that there is something wrong with them if they can't figure it out. In
truth it is usually not their fault. Mauro attributes the confusion to the
fact that most products are "•technology-driven, their nature determined
not by consumers and their needs and desires but by engineers who are
too often entranced with the myriad capabilities of the microprocessors
that lie at the devices' hearts


2. When consumers feel that there is something wrong with them if they can't
figure a high-tech gadget out, which of the following assumptions are they
making?
A. The gadget was designed for ready use by the average consumer.
B. Technology can only be understood by engineer-types.
C. The gadget designers were blind to the consumers' needs.
D. Everyone is equally capable of understanding new technology.
E. they are not as intelligent as the other person

Please explain your answer.

a