[Week 4] Microwave #2

This is a bad example about microwave UI designs. The picture was taken at my kitchen back in Flogsta. To tell the truth, I was really confused by all the buttons, especially the numbers when I was trying to defrost some meatballs. Too many options. In the end I had to press a random number of seconds and wait then cancel the cooking process halfway when I thought it's done.

[Week 4] Microwave #1

This is a first exemple of a microwave. It has an Auto menu, multiple buttons and a scrolling wheel to interact with the microwave. The buttons to the right are easy to reach and use. They can be seen as a speed menu, with a limit of functions and usage which only take a few pushes to set/start/stop the microwave. To use the Auto menu, you have to open the microwave, push one of the alternative buttons and finally scroll the wheel to set time, what type of food, and the amount of food which are to be prepared.

Complicated and unnecessary. The first menu is easier to reach, to understand and to use. It has all the necessary functions and setting-alternatives to use the microwave, enough for the interaction. The Auto menu has confusingly many alternatives, a bad mapping between the menu and the settings you need to scroll between and finally two redundant buttons. All to offer unnecessary and unneeded interaction.

Everything depends on what kind of user the microwave has. This might be a microwave for someone who cooks a lot of different meals and in different ways (e.g. use the grill-function). However, most of the users I know don't. They use the microwave to reheat food or to heat up/cook liquids (e.g. milk, water, sauces, baby food). For those purposes menus and buttons are unnecessary, only offering extra and unwanted interaction, the speed buttons are enough. They are easy to read and to understand.

[Week 4] Idea for assignment 1

Our idea for assignment one is to evaluate different ínteraction styles for a microwave owen. We will post pictures of different microwave ovens and evaluate their interface and interaction style. There are intuitive and not so intuitive interaction styles, it's our intention to evaluate pros and cons with different types. One of the biggest problem is that there are so many models and interaction types, and no consistency.