Thursday, September 19, 2013

The art of terrible design

I am not a chef. Not by profession, not by hobby. I don't like to cook, but I do like good food, so every day I make a proper dinner from fresh ingredients. I guess I am a "gourmet cook".

I have always used a natural gas stove, with four burners. That's the best, the gas has the right high temperature and it's easy and fast to adjust. Like, when you make hot chocolate, you heat the milk quickly, then you have half a second to switch if of when it boils.

After my last move, I got a Bosch electric plate. It's induction based, so it's hot, and it's quick to adjust. It has four stations, which most of the days is just enough for me. However, it has one major flaw.
The designer decided that the plate should be easy to clean, hence it has no protruding knobs, it has touch keys. Or rather, you don't just touch them, you have to press them, "+" for higher, "-" for lower. The buttons go from 0 to 9 in half steps, you push it 17 times for full heat. The designer also thought that a chef wants as little knobs or pushbuttons on the plate as possible. So, instead of having a plus and a minus button for each station, it has one plus and one minus, and a selection button with a light that indicates which station is currently "active". Now, imagine the little pan with milk for my hot chocolate. I put it on 9, I wait for it to boil. When it does, I push the station selector twice to select the milk pan, then I push the minus button 17 times to switch it off. Then I pour new milk in the pan and I clean the plate, because the boiling milk went all over the plate. Of course, after a while you find out there are shortcuts, instead of pressing 17 times, there's a way to switch it of in just a few steps. But including the selector, it's always five or six. And you shouldn't accidentally push the wrong button, or one button once too many, because that increases the total nummber of actions, and you do press the wrong button because you want to stop the milk from boiling over and the buttons are barely visible on the plate. The fastest way to switch off the milk pan is to switch off the plate alltogether. Then you have to switch it back on and switch back on the other stations.

My question is: why does a very expensive stove have such a lousy user interface? Why can't it just have four turning knobs? The answer is simple. The engineers and designers of the stove are not chefs. Or if they are, they have never used this stove, because if they had, they would have changed the user interface.
I propose the following add-on to my stove: a remote control with four turning knobs that let you adjust the stations fast, while maintaining the option of easy cleaning of the plate.

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