poor user experience, hardware edition

[cellio]

I call these "Don Norman doors". It's been 30 years since he wrote The Psychology of Everyday Things (aka POET) and people are still doing stuff like this:

But hey, they recognized the problem -- and "fixed" it with documentation. Yay?

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I was recently mystified by the following control in a hotel shower:

One of those controls temperature, but it moves most of the way around so it's not clear whether you need to turn clockwise or counterclockwise. The other one controls which of two different shower heads to dispense water through. Why there are two shower heads is left as an exercise for the user, I guess. (And, of course, when I'm trying to operate a shower, I don't have my glasses on.)

Comments

[dsrtao]

I taught the word "affordance" to the president of my company using our front door as an example.

I also "fixed" it through documentation, but someone decided that my dry-erase marker wasn't classy enough... and failed to replace it with anything.

[jducoeur]

Heh. So our big investment last year was building a fancy new bathroom for Kate. This condo has always had a bathroom in the master bedroom, but it was the size of a closet, and she couldn't shower without banging her elbows on the walls. So we tore it out, stole some floorspace from the (enormous) master bedroom, and tripled the size of the bathroom. Fancy custom fixtures and all -- really lovely, moderately high-end. Pain in the ass to get there, though: we couldn't use our master bedroom for a couple of months.

It's all great (she still comes down each morning going, "I *love* my shower"), but there was one major klong along the way. After everything was done bar the final inspections, I went to test the shower out -- and there was no water. There were two knobs, mind, one to control the temp and one to control whether you want the main showerhead or the hand-held. But no combination of turning them would produce water. In a tizzy, I called the contractor, fearing that the plumbing wasn't right.

After half an hour of playing with it, he finally puzzled it out. Turning on the water has *nothing* to do with turning the knobs. Instead (and unlabeled, of course), you have to *pull out both knobs* to turn the water on. If either one is pushed in, no water.

All of which works well, mind, once you know what you are doing -- it's a smart design, allowing you to leave the temp and showerhead where you want. But from an affordance POV -- oy...

[damont]

:: general facepalm ::