Lately, I've come to appreciate the extended handle designs on cleaning brushes.
My hands get all wet and soapy from a quick clean up when I'm in direct contact with the brush/sponge, I'm too lazy to wear clumsy gloves; extended handle brushes are now my favorite 'user friendly', ergonomic, multi-angle-versatile household tool!
At the Microsoft kitchens, we have these water machines with the typical 'this is not a drain' - do not pour water into the slush tray:
The design of this specific water machine simply has the design affordance for one to think they are hooked up to the water pipes and hence that slush tray, one would think, would work like a sink drain.
Note that the water machines are even inset into the kitchen counter for me to assume that it's hooked up to the water out pipe.
And so I daydream, if only the machine had a visible bottom where one can obviously see that there is no drain in the slush tray (aided by a lighter interior, perhaps even white to psychologically make people afraid about dirtying the nice white interior!). And I suppose the water-in pipe will just have to invisibly be hooked from the back or bottom, ideally at the top of the machine so again users would assume the mental model that it's the in-pipe and not the out-pipe...
Of course ideally, the water machines should be hooked with an out-pipe if not for the extra cost ...
I'm probably not the typical IKEA customer but for us frequent IKEA shoppers, at some point, we have bought so many IKEA furniture and hate throwing away good useful extra parts/tools that comes with the simple 1-2-3 DIY boxes, it seems very wasteful to keep getting parts I don't need but have no where to dispose of them fruitfully.
So. How about this?
What if IKEA had a fun station for the frequent buyers with a ton of spare parts of some parts and not others, where there's a dispenser that automatically dispensed the parts we'll need to build the furniture we just bought, bag up the ones we are lacking and put the rest back in the 'Extra Parts Bin'.
And like a coin organizer, the extra parts bin can easily organize all the various parts to the different components and feed back to the parts vending machine.
IKEA today already currently have stations in the back door to get some extra parts.
The proposed assembly line system can also feed to this back door supply and make it fun and gadgety to get extra parts :)
I love these self service stands; I feel more part of the shopping and building experience.
It's not for everyone, especially if you want a quickie at crowded IKEA. But perhaps Mr. Ford might approve of this self service assembly line... :)
I love optimization problems. In another universe, I might've studied Operations Research Industrial Engineer ...
Recently, my fiancé surprised me and mentioned, on his own, how he would consider pre-fabricated homes. Having been trained in architecture, that excited me. Pre-fab homes are awesome -- they can be built more environmentally friendly And, the best part, you can choose your optimal floor plan without having to pay architect fees which we can't afford yet. :)
For fun, we looked around at some pre-fab homes (no we have not encountered an affordable, conveniently located plot of land to put a pre-fab on yet, but let us know if you do :)) and found that since they are built more efficiently, they also come at a great price! A typical, 3-bedroom American home can be bought with just ~$100,000. A beautiful modern in contrast can be 3x the price at ~$300,000. Ultimately though, pre-fabs are still a great deal for the package!
A modern pre-fab we came across and found out we could rent is the following by Method Homes. I would love to, one day, live in one of these very elegantly modern pre-fabs:
In any case, while perusing through more average American pre-fabs, I got excited by the multitude of plans one can choose from. One particular plan inspired and overcame me one Sunday night; I ended up editing the floor plan to my liking and created a 3D model in [render lousy but convenient] Sketch Up.
Original Plan
The long ends are facing North and South respectively (left and right) and hence the top of the plan is East facing and the bottom side is West facing. The western wall faces a private yard and hence a lot of windows were placed to maximize light and extend the interior space to the outside.
My fiancé and I spend most of our time in the living room so for our particular lifestyle opening up the kitchen, living and dining room would work best. We actually hardly ever use the dining table at our current place so I decided to break down the kitchen wall and make a large island around the stove for us and guests to eat at.
Modified Plan
One person could be watching tv in the living room and the other, just behind, working at the 'office space' in the original dining room -- we would still be sharing the same space and can see what the other is doing.
I noticed in a lot of the plans we perused and the few demos we were able to walk into, had these awesome jet tubs -- and since we were just recently in Japan, tubs have now become part of my dream home wish list ;) so here, in the master bath, I added ... The Jet Tub.
Another feature in the master bath that I added was a linen closet/shelf at the end of the shower. I'm impressed by the amount of storage closets one of the pre-fab companies we saw had; in every possible corner they added a fantastically useful storage closet. I assumed they've done so many iterations on the plans, they've gotten really good at optimizing the space wonderfully for the typical American family.
This end closet was actually also inspired by a detail at my sister's master bath; the builder had a beautifully tiled-increased-width divider between the shower and the sink; the extra width allows room to put the usual toiletries -- i.e. Costco sized shampoo, conditioner containers... On my version and in this particular bathroom floor plan, this shelf would be perfect for a set of shelves on the other side, facing the toilet. I'm loving this detail :)
Another detail I never resolved in this fun little exercise is the entry.
In the original plan, there's a transition space before entering either the kitchen or living room via an archway to the kitchen and a corner wall from the kitchen/living room divider. I like this original transition although I'm just not a big fan of the kitchen not opening up to the living room.
Here are a few vignettes where I tried to study the experience to no avail of a satisfied solution...
I use to not be able to articulate why the toilet paper roll was better to roll from the top vs the bottom but I recently came to a very Jakob Nielsen heuristics explanation that I can use the next time this age old debate comes up. ;)
Simply put, Heuristic 1: Visibility of System Status.
With the next paper roll sheet coming from the top, the user can quickly, visibly establish where to grab for the next sheet. Whereas roll on the bottom, user needs to look harder, maybe even rotate the roll a full cycle, and look for the sheet often hidden at the back of the roll, towards the wall instead of facing the user.
Why is the next sheet most often laying visibly at the top of the roll, you may ask? The physics of tearing a toilet paper roll at the 'average speed' when rolling from the top naturally lands the next sheet at the top of the roll. When roll is at the bottom, the physics of tearing often leaves the next sheet by the back of the wall and hence more hidden from toilet paper user.
Now because toilet paper user can easily see the state of where the next sheet is at when rolling from top, we also automatically earn the following heuristic: Error Prevention. We prevent the user from having to roll or look behind for the next tp sheet to tear as again it is most often visible at the top of the roll.
Aren't Nielsen's heuristics so much fun when applied to non software contexts?! :)
I hate getting traffic tickets; it's not that I don't want to be a safe driver, there are just a lot of usability issues with driving. Driving is a great example where very often the user is not at fault.
Case in point: the 2 times I've gotten a speeding ticket were both unintentional; on one of these tickets, I even had my then 50+ year old mom look out for the speed limit sign with me. I remember being on the empty, many lane highway, car set on cruise, yet not being able to spot a speed limit sign. At one point of the search, I thought I saw a sign though I missed it as I was trying to watch where I was going ahead of me and also trying to catch the small blurred numbers on the sign at the far right.
Er, Fitt's law right? My eyes were trying to focus on 2 things ~90' apart, plus the emotional stress of trying to drive in a highway with 2 family members I wanted to ensure the safety of and all my packed stuff crowded high around them as I make the long distance drive from upstate NY to Pittsburgh.
Recently, I got another ticket for "rolling" on a stop sign. I know, it should just be ingrained in me to stop completely at a stop sign and I am at fault here, though wouldn't it be nice and helpful if there was more of an incentive around stopping at a stop sign?
Before I sound too disagreeable, I marvel in a lot of the great tricks used by the transportation system to make driving safer -- the sloped highways in LA make the steering wheel turn mostly on itself, the intricate but often very sensible reasons to exiting and entering a freeway -- i.e. the extra lane to pad the incoming traffic, to name a few.
And since it seems I cannot hope for autonomous vehicles just yet -- including the lack of a good business case: the insurance cost of a car failing may not work in the American capitalist system whereas the technology may be sustainable in more socialist and communist countries -- I suppose it would be more productive to dream about how to improve the rolling-on-a-stop-sign phenomena.
The first thought that came to mind was using a blinking red light instead of the stop signs. They personally are more effective to me because they remind me of the traffic lights where I am consistently reminded of the consequences of not stopping at a red light -- the possibility of hitting oncoming traffic from the other direction. The downside to this is we may overuse the red light signal and drivers will learn to dismiss a blinking red light as a lot do now with stop signs. Without additional studies, I cannot be certain that learned dismissal may not be an issue, though my intuition is to not overuse a very important, life saving signal.
Another method then, though negatively rewarding, is to threaten drivers with the camera flash. If drivers know that cameras are installed in all intersections, including stop signed intersections, perhaps this would motivate drivers to truly stop. There's something personally less stressful about an 'objective' computer telling me that I did something wrong than a policeman flashing his roof lights and confronting me with my mistake. I assume the traffic computers are rational and hence can admit my fault more easily than having an urge to argue with another 'subjective' human being that no sir, I did indeed 'stop' enough to know it was safe to move onward.
In any case, the transportation space always intrigues me. There are so many fun usability challenges to optimize for! This could be a full semester project which the under budget government could fund in the academia and surely come up with, in a short period of time, many great ideas.
We're heading to a Lunar New Year party tomorrow and what do you know, we don't have red envelopes and we're in the US; I can't just go to the neighborhood convenient store and pick up a pack. So what do I do? Look through my hoard of craft material from all sorts of resources I've collected from and make my very own!
I scrounged out exactly 2 sheets of red packing tissue paper, folded them ~6 times and ended up with wintered - red envelopes, aka, red envelopes that appear to be wearing a winter red fluffy thick jacket! At least the fragile tissue paper seems less fragile now with all its layers. Very appropriate for this year's chilly winter. ;)
Hope the kids will love them!
I was also going to calligraphy the writing but alas, it's been too long since my last calligraphy class... I spy a kitty paw, do you? :)
So. How about this?
This end closet was actually also inspired by a detail at my sister's master bath; the builder had a beautifully tiled-increased-width divider between the shower and the sink; the extra width allows room to put the usual toiletries -- i.e. Costco sized shampoo, conditioner containers... On my version and in this particular bathroom floor plan, this shelf would be perfect for a set of shelves on the other side, facing the toilet. I'm loving this detail :)
