I’ve decided to fix the tech industry. All of it, right now. Here’s how.

If it’s been done before, do it better

Company exec: I have an idea for an eBook reader. It’ll be like the Kindle, only rubbish and more expensive. Happily, our customers have the intelligence of drunken sparrows and are easily confused by colour. The Kindle is white, ours will be white. They’ll never know.

CEO: Sebastian, you’re a genius. The money I was going to invest in research and development I can now use to buy another yacht, from which I can sip champagne and watch as my company goes down the pan quicker than the contents of a banker’s pockets after a knock on the door from the fuzz.

I guarantee this conversation is going on right now. And it’s not just confined to eBook readers, but laptops, all-in-ones, smartphone OSes, you name it. Monkeys exhibit similar behaviour in zoos, clapping their hands because the first monkey to do so got a banana. Only our tech monkeys aren’t even managing to clap their hands, they’re just wiping their bottoms, throwing the contents at the glass and expecting us to pay for the results. You know who you are tech monkeys. Now stop clapping and start dancing.

Appoint a common-sense officer

It’s my theory that like mobs, companies get stupider the larger they are. Decisions that would have been laughed out of the room in a five-man company appear messianic when preached by one man to five hundred followers. To combat this, I suggest that every company hires a common-sense officer. Preferably British. Preferably northern. Preferably my dad.

The common-sense officer would sit around drinking cups of tea the colour of rust, and vetoing 99% of the ideas companies have. To give you an idea of the value of a common-sense officer, let’s imagine how this noble position could have prevented some of the tech world’s more recent gaffs.

2007:

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s called Beacon and when you a visit a website, Facebook tells all you friends.

Stu’s dad: [rolls up his copy of the Daily Star and smacks Zuckerberg over the head with it]. Next!

2009:

Phorm engineer: It’s perfectly secure, but we do kind of know what sites you’ve visited.

Stu’s dad: Smear yourself in honey, find a bear and kick it in the face. The results will be the same.

2010:

Steve Ballmer: So it’s Window Mobile 6, except there’s some hexagons, and it was designed on the back of a napkin. We’re calling it Windows Mobile 6.5.

Stu’s dad: Just stay home and polish your forehead, Steve. Trust me on this.

Take the "chew your own face off" test

Large companies would have us believe they spend millions testing new software to ensure it’s friendly and intuitive. This is clearly nonsense. New software is as friendly and intuitive as crocodile dentistry. Which is silly, because making your software user friendly requires only one person taking part in the “chew your own face off test,” which runs thusly.

Stick a normal person in a room with your software for ten minutes. Once the test is concluded, if that user would rather spend the next ten minutes finding ways to chew off their own face than carry on using your software, you’ve failed. Alternatively, just fit them with heart monitors and measure their rage for the duration. A single spike represents failure. Either is acceptable, and either would make your software ... you know, good.

Tell the truth

This is very simple. Every broadband provider should be forced to put up an interactive map allowing you to click on your area and find out what their average broadband speeds are at different times of the day, based on actual usage data collected from existing customers. ISPs should be forced to do this by Ofcom. Ofcom should realise its long held dream of not being hopeless.

Incompetence discounts

The vast majority of shop assistants will never be any good, so how about this instead? Every time they give you a factually incorrect piece of information, £10 is knocked off the price of your purchase and you get to hit them with a stick. This would encourage customers to swot up before going anywhere near the store, and shop assistants to spend less time lathering their head in product and more time learning what that shiny, bleepy, electronic thing in the corner is. The store with the offer on would probably find foot traffic increases tenfold.

The next step

Right, that should get us going. My aim is to publish a tech manifesto that will lead to a better world, full of better people using better gizmos designed by better companies, and I need your help. In the next few days I’ll offer up my rules for we the public. Feel free to post your own suggestions below and after we’ve all had a nice, old bicker and plenty of tea, I’ll pull them all together and see what we’ve got.