Good design, bad design
I'm just back from a week on the road, catching up on emails, blogs, and other news. In the process I came across a little article at Gizmodo.com lauding the design of a new towel rack. But is it really that good?
It's certainly attractive, that towel rack. It's right up there with the philosophy that design is "art design" -- it's got to look good, have a statement, or something. Being an engineer, and a human factors specialist at that, I'm of a rather different opinion -- good design has to be easy to use, easy to understand, and intuitive, while at the same time being unintrusive. Does this towel rack achieve that? No. Why? Well, despite having three arms for towels that rotate for access, it's still a floor-mounted design. Most bathrooms don't have a lot of floor space, particularly near a shower or tub where you actually need to have a towel close by. Then there's the variable height -- the lowest rack looks to be at about knee level. What good is that? Do I want to bend over to grab a towel? Usability -- fail.
It may seem a bit silly to be ranting about towel racks, but I'm sensitive because during a week on the road through three different hotels, I was exposed to it excessively. Three hotel rooms, each of which had nice "art design", but didn't have towel racks in reach of the shower -- be sure to remember to drop a towel on the toilet seat before you jump in so you have one in reach when you get out. All three had horribly designed shower faucets -- the kind that have a single control for both water pressure and hot/cold termperature. In two cases, that single control was a single dial. You dial the control to increase water pressure, and somewhere along the line you had to figure out what the right setting was for water temperature. Getting the temperature right usually meant getting the water flow wrong.
I find it hard to take room designers seriously when they can't figure out a sinple shower control. Look, guys, a shower control has to do three things: control water pressure, control water temperature, and direct flow to/from tub and shower. Would it kill you to separate the functions so they are intuitively obvious? Like, say, an up-down control for water pressure with a dial control for temperature? Stop trying to be artsy and cute and give me something I can use.
Poor decisions on simple things is part of what got me into the acquisition business. A personal war story: I'm left-eye dominant, which means that with both eyes open, I favor what I see through the left eye. It's fairly severe, so to use a rifle sight I have to physically close my left eye, where right-handed, right-eye dominant people can use the sights with both eyes open. On the M1A1 Abrams tank I commanded as a platoon leader, the commander's sight extension was set up to be used by the right eye -- the brow pad over the sight allowing you to align your head would only allow for placement of the head in one position, with the right eye over the sight. This was a real pain, since for gunnery I had to constantly keep my left eye closed (bully for the commander's display in the M1A2 which allowed me to sit back and use both eyes when using the commander's independent sight). The M3A2 Bradley I commanded next had an adjustable brow pad over the sight extension -- so I could move it over and place it so I could use my left eye on the sight. A simple thing, really, but it made a big difference in usability and reduced fatigue during gunnery.
I wish more so-called "designers" would use user-centered design principles. Want a good starting point? I recommend Don Norman's book The Design of Everyday Things (and subsequent sequels). Norman is a UC San Diego psychology professor who has spent a lot of time studying usability and design. I guarantee that after reading it you'll never look at a doorknob or shower control the same way again.
