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Saturday, November 02, 2013

The art of bad design

I have a wastebin in my kitchen. It's a simple bin, mostly thin sheet metal, plastic inner bucket. The lid opens by a pedal at the bottom, so you don't have to touch it with your hands. It was rather cheap, though one of the most expensive ones the store had on display.
Now, someone has spent a couple of days designing the thing. They created a few prototypes, tested them, created some production models, tested them, then set off to mass produce them. Also, the designer probably designed wastebins of similar type before, and they obviously use one on a daily basis. You'd expect the bin to be perfect. But it's not.

First, the hinge that holds the lid protrudes a millimeter. When you lift the inner bucket from the bin, that millimeter is enough to make the bucket get stuck, you can't lift it out without wiggling and jerking it. Which, if the bin is full, causes content to fall out. There's no reason for the hinge to protrude. At the same cost, it could have been made so that it doesn't stick out. But they didn't.
The second issue is when you want to get the plastic bag out of the bucket. Most people use plastic bags in the wastebin, so they don't have to thoroughly clean the bin every time they empty it. The handle that you use to lift the bucket, is one millimeter smaller than the bucket itself. It sticks out to the inside. Which means that when you lift the bag out, the handle gets pulled up and you can't lift the bag. Again you have to use both hands and wiggle and jerk, causing garbage to spread over your kitchen floor. There's no reason why this handle should stick out to the inside. It's just a designer being thoughtless.

I'm surprised how a person who has experience designing wastebins and who uses one, and has used many in their life, can make such stupid and unnecessary mistakes. My theory is that they are not the person who does the kitchen work too often in their household, or they wouldn't have made these mistakes.

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.

Monday, September 16, 2013

An animated map of the history of Europe

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

I was at a Demo conference in 2001, in Phoenix, AZ. Demo2001. I was selected to maybe do a pitch, which they called "the hot seat". Some fifty startup entrepreneurs were located in the front of the room, and every half hour they'd call two names, and when your name came up, spotlights were pointed at you, people with huge cameras would rush towards you and film you from two feet distance, just to make it scary, and while your face was on a big screen in the front, you got two minutes for a pitch. Now, you weren't sure your name would come up. The people who weren't called, were nervous throughout the conference, because they didn't announce when they'd call someone, it just came up suddenly. Nerve wracking, because the room was full with investors and other important people, I guess there were 1000 people in the room.
My name came up second, right after the key note. I got to relax and listen to the presentations, while most of my fellow hot seat entrepreneurs were still waiting for their name. It's always good to have your pitch or presentation right at the start. I was second, which is even better than first.
On the last day of the conference, I was ill. High fever, maybe because of the heat, I stayed in bed. At the end of the day I talked to one of the programmers who'd manned our booth, and he said "there was a lady asking for you today". I asked if he caught the name, and he said "yeah, her name was Ann Winblad". I never shout at people, but this time I did. "then why didn't you call for me? Why didn't you run to my room, bang on the door, and get me down there in the booth?" and some words I won't repeat here. The poor guy didn't know who Ann Winblad is. I sent her an email, called her office, to no avail.

The company didn't make it, in the end. Me talking to Ms Winblad might have made the difference.