Can Someone Please Re-Design My Microwave?
We have almost 75 years of programmable computing behind us, so why on earth cooking things on the microwave is such a hard task?
In December 1943 the Brits introduced us with Colossus — the first electric programmable computer (computer hope). Since, we’ve created the desktop, the window-based OS, touch screens and wired ourselves with cutting-edge sensors tech. Still — I’m so nervous from that day my microwave or, god forbid, my washing machine will die and I’ll have to replace them. Why?
Countless times I have tried to cook potatoes in the microwave and had the discomfort of not selecting the right cooking program. Every single time I’ve reached my washing machine I had the same doubt of what’s the best program to this specific combination of clothes. What are the factors to consider? dirt? smell? color? fabric? how many kilos of laundry? And if I use only 2 programs out of the 15 offered — am I missing something? Sure I am! Or maybe not?
User experience is not just for startups, It’s not just for the creation process and it is most definitely doesn’t deal exclusively with the digital world. Re-designing the washing-machine or the microwave experience holds inside of it not just making the world a better and easier place to live in (which I think designers should think of more often than they do right now), but also a huge business opportunity no one takes! This is the perfect example of how a UX convention is born, sometimes, from a misconception.
The sin here is double — first, no one really thought of the user when he or she designed the experience of these machines. The second, which is worse, is that new microwaves are “born” every day, and still no change! The convention is so inherent, that it becomes an icon. It’s a snowball effect. The bad design became so common that the complexity became a part of how users expect a microwave to look like. Samsung did this, LG did this, this is how a washing machine needs to operate.
I think this-this is a classic case of the product is a result of what the manufacturer thinks the users needs rather than what the users really use. Think of it. You probably use 2 or 3 programs. That’s it. You wish you could use others, but you just don’t understand the difference between them, or what’s the right program to the specific combination of fabrics and colors.
In the age of IoT, sensors and machine learning — I cannot comprehend this huge gap. I dream of a machine that can smell my clothes, weight them, scan the colors, sense the fabric type and fit the right program — by itself! Think of a microwave operating with a voice interface — “microwave please cook these potatoes for a potato mesh” and the microwave weights the potatoes and cooks them accordingly. What a wonderful world it could be?
