This paper is concerned with the design of an electric oven with advanced programming features. The new oven was to replace older designs, which lacked usability due to the accumulation of features. The new design had the constraint of an LCD screen and six soft keys. This constraint was set so that the new design would be on time.
Bertelsen notes that the oven represents the merging of seperate cooking methods (baking/heating/frying) into a single unit. The oven changed the activity significantly and Bertelsen states that the introduction of programming gives it agent status: it can assume responsibility for cooking the food right.
The study consisted of field studies of the oven in use. From the study the researchers found that users adapted the kitchen to their needs through tailoring of the programms (tech-savvy users), or in other cases overriding or bypassing them (luddites). They found out that although the users believed that the introduction of programming features would be of great help, almost none used them and all rely on manual use (”It’s too complicated. It’s the same as with the computer”). This was rooted to a distrust in using “computers” in the kitchen: their job was to “prepare food, not use computers”. This also has to do with some advantages that the more physical interfaces (e.g. knobs) have over soft-keys, in such an environment.
What I found interesting in this paper is that it presents a pragmatic way of developing and testing a product and planning for unanticipated use. Even the constraint of the physical aspect of the interface (LCD screen with softkeys), is viewed dialecticaly as both a constraint and chance for a faster design (because of the limited design space).
Leave a Reply