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Previous: Hotel room warning | Main | Next: HomeDepot.com order cancellation
June 28, 2005 09:00 AM
Broken: Stove interface
Saltation points us to the BBC story Deafblind slate 'senseless' tech. Excerpt:
A man who had just bought a new cooker was unaware that the knobs for the two back rings turned clockwise to increase the heat, while the two front rings operated in the reverse direction.He put some oil in a frying pan on what he thought was a low setting and, while chopping an onion, the pan caught fire because he had in fact turned up the ring to the highest setting.
A bad stove interface like that can cause problems even for people who can see and hear.
I have an electric ceran top with dual sized heating elements on the front. The controls for the dual sized elements have the lo setting near the top and the hi setting near the bottom. The intermediate settings for the smaller ring are on the right hand side (clockwise), and the settings for the larger ring are on the left hand side (counterclockwise).
I wonder if the stove has other features that cause the controls have different behaviours for the front and back rings.
This is just like the coffee machine with the hot water on tap. Can we not standardize things? Even among ONE MACHINE? Is this too much to ask? what aesthetic purpose could having different controls possibly serve? I think they should do consumer testing with real people, like beta testers, who use the appliances and point out how stupid they are so we don't have to. I've already expressed the sentiment that any company featured on here more than likely deserves to go out of business, and I reiterate it here.
They probably did have beta testers, and the beta testers probably DID say it was a crap design. The company surely ignored them, and released the product anyways, to make their shareholders happy that things were being produced. This is the danger in not standing ones ground and telling people "no, we're not going to release a crap product".
Go into a store that sells this model by an employee that works on commission and he can probably go into detail why this function is a good one. But if he was not trying to earn a living by selling the stove you have your eye on he would tell you its broken.
Also whats broken here is someone trying to heat-up oil to a cooking level on the low setting.
You know what's really broken? BBC using the so-called word "deafblind" ... What's wrong with "deaf and blind"?
Anyway, I feel bad for the guy with the stove, and I completely agree that it was execrable design, but I can't help thinking ... If I was deaf and/or blind (or even if I wasn't), and I'd just bought a device capable of causing gross personal injury and property damage, I think I'd seek -- y'know -- *training* on it before I went to fry up an onion on my own.
I have a glass-top stove that has a diagram next to each knob to indicate which one goes with which burner. I have to puzzle it out every since time because it doesn't make any intuitive sense without the little pictures. I can't imagine what I would do if I had to try to choose a burner without being able to see!
I have a glass-top stove that has a diagram next to each knob to indicate which one goes with which burner. I have to puzzle it out every single time because it doesn't make any intuitive sense without the little pictures. I can't imagine what I would do if I had to try to choose a burner without being able to see!
> How does a pot catch fire?
Read the poting: it was a pan that caught fire. Does that clear things up?
Of course, the actual pan didn't start burning. The whole conglomerate of the pan including contents caught fire. This language concept where a part stands for the whole is called synecdoche. It's an integral part of language and even children just beginning to acquire language skills are perfeectly capable of using and understanding such constructs. Noone with an IQ above ~50 should have difficulties understanding it.
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Previous: Hotel room warning | Main | Next: HomeDepot.com order cancellation
How did the designers even come up with that? It had to be a conscious decision -- definitely broken.
Posted by: First at June 28, 2005 09:11 AM