Warming up neurons in the microwave

Friday night, 4 o'clock in the morning, I am woken up by the screams of my little daughter who, like every night, demands her nightly food supplement (it is not her turn due to her age, but the girl is hungry), but something has changed... the surroundings are unfamiliar to me. I am not at home, I am spending the weekend with my family and my brothers and sisters in law in a rural tourism house and I have to grope my way down some stairs to the kitchen, which is on the ground floor.

Before going to sleep, I have strategically prepared everything so as not to wake the sleepers: the exact amount of milk and cereal, everything ready to be heated in the microwave. But that night I made a fatal mistake: I forgot to familiarise myself with the microwave and when I get ready to start it up I find this:

Half asleep, under the pressure of the situation, trying not to make noise so as not to wake anyone and my daughter complaining, hungry, I start fiddling with the buttons trying to get it working, but there is no way, I try all the possible combinations, and after about 15 / 20 minutes of eternal tension (and after waking everyone up), I finally find one that works, which follows the next steps:

1. “Pre-regulation”, several clicks on the button to control the power.
2. Weather
3. Time scheduling
4. Start-up

All of this is laid out on a control panel, which as you can see is self-explanatory...

The design of microwave oven controls is a recurring theme in any usability blog, along with the design of remote controls, lifts and interactive kiosks. It is curious how a household appliance that is nothing more than a fastest oven, The new system is to be conceived as the control panel of an aeroplane.

In general, microwave oven controls tend to suffer from the following shortcomings:

• Excess of complexity and «placebo» functionalities.
• Lack of affordance on the buttons. Given the context, the buttons should be large, old school, with defined volume and limitations. In other words, that we can serve them with our hands stained with flour or oil.
• Taggedlack of clear instructions, or instructions that are hidden when you put your finger on the button, or that are erased after a short time when you clean the oven.

Images of Birdies 100, Joseph Nicolia, Peter Renshaw y Andreas Bossard

In some public places, e.g. offices or self-service restaurants, we can also see some examples of post-design, i.e. additions and notes from users to correct design errors or missing instructions.

Images of Jonathan Blundell y Tim Collins.

In some cases, they may even be very aggressive...

 

More entries from Design