brokenclay.org/journal

Product Design

Can I just complain about rotten product design? I’m staying in this hotel, and because I’ve been an idiot and packed linen, I’m ironing. Or maybe I should say that I’m trying to iron. This Proctor-Silex iron has two idiotic controls.

One is a toggle switch (left/right), which has a little cloud icon on one side and a little cloud icon with a small diagonal line on the other side. What do these mean? Steam and no steam? Hot steam and cold water? On and off? Strange and charmed?

The other control is a knob. It turns 360 degrees, either direction. It has one dot, two dots, and three dots, apparently indicating different temperatures, but there’s no way to tell if it’s full on or full off.

Then there’s the cord. Every time I set the iron down, I set it down on its cord. Finally in desperation, I switch the iron to the other hand, and lo! The cord, which comes out of one side, stays out of the way. It’s a right-handed iron. The mind boggles.

Katja

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