Usability – designing for people

An otherwise great mobile phone is let down by one niggling fault: the lens cover does not lock closed securely enough.

As most Sony Ericsson k800i owners have found out fairly quickly, the sliding lens cover will flop open at the slightest touch.

Pick up the phone, pop it into a pocket and the chances are the lens cover will open, thus activating the camera.

This can result in the lens getting dirty or damaged and the battery running down. All a bit annoying.

If a problem like this is so easy to spot, why does it get through to production?

I would expect the next design revision of this phone not to have the same problem. We shall see.

This Acer TravelMate 8100 notebook computer has at least three design faults that make an otherwise perfectly respectable machine a bit of an ergonomic dog and a real pain to live with.

1. The power button is located in a position where you are most likely to place your thumb when you pick up the machine. As a result, it is all too easy to unexpectedly and abruptly power off the machine.

2. WiFi and Bluetooth buttons are prominently placed at the front edge, exactly where fingers and palms of hands will apply pressure at any time during normal use. As a result, you will find your WiFi disappearing without warning, usually when you least want it to.

3. Air inlets on the under side of the casing get blocked if you place the Acer on a non-flat surface, such as your lap. As a result, the machine does not get the cooling it needs, the fan starts screaming at max RPM, power consumption goes up and the whole thing starts to overheat.

All of these faults give you a bad feeling about using this machine and worse, can result in lost data. I don’t have anything against Acer notebook computers; they are quite good value for money, but fundamental design mistakes should not appear in a consumer product like this, particularly when the manufacturers go through countless design iterations as new and updated models get churned out on a regular basis.

Most people will not look for or notice design faults like this, but they will notice the irritations caused by them. This reflects badly on the manufacturer, its brand and future products – all bad for business.

Make mistakes once and learn, just don’t keep on repeating them.

Hand dryers are nasty, environmentally unsound and surprisingly unhygienic machines. Dyson’s Airblade is the antithesis of this.

I really like it when someone takes a product which has evolved little for decades, turns it on its head and comes up with something substantially better in almost every way.

Airblade uses significantly less power than a conventional dryer, dries hands quicker and is considerably more hygienic. Oh, and it’s British too.


So, why are conventional dryers so bad?

1. They use a lot of power, typically 2000W or more. They also use very little of that energy to actually dry hands and most of it to heat the room, which if air conditioned, wastes even more energy cooling the room down. This is not very green.
2. Hygiene is questionable: airborne bacteria gets sucked into the machine – where it can multiply in a nice warm environment – and is then blasted back out on to the user’s hands.

The only negative I can see with the Airblade – and this could be a big problem – is that it needs to be used in a different way to a conventional dryer: you place your open hands in the slot and raise them slowly up through a sheet of air which acts like a squeegee.

For obvious reasons, I have not hung around to watch how people use a Dyson Airbade, but I would guess that despite the clear and simple instructions on the front, quite a few people will get confused and attempt to wave their hands around in the slot.

I have no connection with Dyson, but I hope people see the light and Airblade takes off.