Bad design tends to be my excuse now for everything that I can’t figure out. It’s true, really, that if it’s not obvious how to use something, then the product is probably poorly designed. The best example of this that I can think of is my combined oven and stove. The apartment I live in has quite an old oven/stove appliance, and I want to take you through why it fails the user miserably.
To begin, I’ll set the scene. I’m in my apartment with my three other roommates, and we’re all in the kitchen making dinner. It’s a small kitchen, so imagine a bit of chaos. I preheat the oven to 400 degrees. That part seems simple. I just hit “Bake” and then push the buttons with numbers. What’s confusing is that once I hit “Start,” there is no feedback indicating that the oven has been started. There’s no light and there’s no switch. To make it worse, it doesn’t even show me the current temperature that the oven is at, so I can’t check to see how much it has heated up. The only signifier to show me that the oven is on is a little beeping noise that goes off one time when the oven has reached 400 degrees. Now remember that I’m in my kitchen with three other girls, and as luck has it, the microwave beeps and the sink starts running and plates scrape against each other all at the same moment when the oven beeps. So at this point, the only way I can see if the oven is hot is if I open the door and stick my hand inside. Not the safest solution, if you ask me.
On top of the oven is the stove. The actual burners are arranged in two perfect columns and two perfect rows to fit four total burners. The knobs, however, are placed in one row with four separate columns. In my mind, the knobs farthest from me should be the ones to control the burners farthest from me. So the top right burner should coordinate with the knob farthest on the right. That is not the case. I can’t even count how many times I’ve sat waiting for water to boil for far too long before noticing that it’s not even warm.
I promise I’m not stupid. The real problem here is that this oven/stove set lacks important things: signifiers and feedback. A signifier is an indication to the user about how to perform a task. Feedback is a response from the product that tells the user that a task has been completed. In the oven and stove example, the oven lacks feedback. There is no light or visual cue to tell me that it’s getting hot or that it’s ready. For the stove, there is no clear signifier to tell me which knob controls which burner. These seemingly small design errors are what ultimately fail the user. And in the case of an oven and stove, the consequences are potentially quite dangerous.
Many times, the reason we as users tend to make mistakes while using a product is not to the fault of our own. Instead, like in the stove scenario, we make these mistakes because the product invites them. Not all poorly designed products are as obvious as the stove, but bad design is out there more than we think.
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