So in this week’s assignment, we were tasked to examine a digital appliance that we deal with, analyze its usability, and suggest improvements. The example we looked at in class was an alarm clock, but as I don’t have one (I’m the cellphone alarm type), I started looking around at other things in my apartment that confound me on a daily basis. The one that stuck out, and for very similar reasons to the clock, was my oven.
This sounds like a stupid idea: it’s an oven, it just heats stuff, right? No. This is an oven with a digital interface (complete with clock) and it annoys the hell out of me. I can never figure out how to get it to time and cook and such. I work with technology all day. I’m getting a master’s degree in technology. I should not be bested by a cooking appliance, but yet, here I am writing about my struggles with it.
This is the beast in question:
And then here’s the closeup:
In case that’s hard to see, there’s a blurrier but brighter shot here as well.
The process I examined here was setting the oven temperature and the cook time, which as noted above, is an awful lot like setting an alarm clock.
1. Task: Set the time from 12:00 to 11:59
2. Buttons: [CT]Cook Time [T]emp [S]tart [M]inutes
3. Notation: / press \ release * repeat task s- seconds to complete
And here’s the video of me attempting to set the oven to cook something for 25 minutes at 430 degrees (not that I know what would ever need to be cooked for that long at that temperature). As is visible in the video, I even screw it up a bit, hitting the wrong buttons — and this is something I use! It’s in my apartment!
[Video]
The notation for the use is as follows:
[CT/ \ ] [M/ -6seconds] [T/ -5seconds] [S/]
or
[CT/ \ ] [M/ \ *25 -11seconds] [T/ \ *16 -5seconds] [S/]
Post a Comment