Water, water everywhere...

by Patty Lakinsmith

This one is for the "This Is Broken" usability file.

I found myself in an embarassing situation on a recent business trip. I was attempting to take a shower, and could not locate the control to redirect the water to flow to the shower head instead of the tub. I'm well traveled and have seen a lot of plumbing fixtures, but I was so perplexed by this one that I had to phone the front desk...or resign myself to taking a bath.

Here is the top part of the control.

Here is the bottom part.

Can you tell how to make the water come out of the shower head instead of the tub spigot? When the helpful front desk clerk explained it to me it was clear that they had a lot of calls on this one.

No fair peeking below.

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

OK, here's how it works.

Here's the answer - the bottom edge of the spigot pulls down to activate the shower redirect. Clever, huh?

This is one example of how population stereotypes can be very helpful. People expect certain frequently used controls, whether they are well designed or not. A light switch is one example (we expect them to flip up and down), water faucets another (I'll cover the temperature control on my Grohe kitchen faucet another time).

I'm sure that the designer of the faucet above was quite pleased that the mechanism to redirect the water was cleverly hidden, allowing the clean elements of the design to prevail. But how much money are these faucets costing the hotel chain that installed them? Every time a new guest stays at the hotel there is likely a call to the front desk to ask how to use it, which costs them in lost productivity. How many guests get annoyed, don't bother to call the front desk, and choose not to stay there again?

Sometimes a seemingly small user interface design decision can cause a chain reaction of events that ultimately cost a company money.

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Dr. Lakinsmith is a senior scientist with Monterey Technologies, Inc., and has performed in a technical leadership role in a number of major commercial and government human engineering projects. She has applied user-centered principles and processes to the design and evaluation of both traditional and intelligent user interfaces on devices from screen-based telephones to critical cockpit systems.