distributedlife

Not a hot topic but not too long ago I purchased myself a washing machine. A Samsung something or other. It’s a great washing machine but it’s user interface bugs me.

I’ll start with the Easy cycle option.

To start an easy cycle you need to press four different buttons a total of eleven times. Power On, Course x8, Water level and then Start. The one that gets me the most is having to press the course button eight times. Easy is last in the list? How is that easy?

The second gripe I have is the power on button and the start button are next to each other. Start and power on are terms that can both mean the same thing. Now the existence of two buttons when one would do is not the primary issue. It’s that they are next to each other and they both need to be pressed to complete the process of setting up a wash. First button is power and the last button is start. Right next to each other.

So many times I go to “start the wash cycle” and turn it off. Makes me sad.  Because now I have to press eleven buttons again to start my easy cycle.

The last one is the fill level. It may sound innocuous but it uses a control where it starts on medium; presumably the most common setting before heading up to high and then back down to low. So if you want to put on a small load you have to press the fill level six times… to choose one of four options.

All of this could be normal and by design but it’s almost like they built the machine but never asked anyone to use it before they built it. It was only the other day that I saw a product being advertised as usable because it only involved four clicks to complete. While that shouldn’t be your only metric for determining usability it’s certainly one to consider.