I’m hard at work on an evening design project (which you can see sneak peeks of here and here). In the meantime I thought I would share this wonderful hack I spotted in my dentist’s office this week:

Isn’t this use of dental floss somehow poetic and beautiful?

On one of my recent flights, this was the view of the tray table on the seat-back in front of me, pretty much at eye level:

Staring at it through my normal take-off angst, I found myself trying to imagine who had decided this was the right text to inscribe on every tray table. It’s hard to read in this photo, but these two sentences are, “Fasten seat belt while seated,” and “Use bottom cushion for flotation device.” The first one seems appropriate to me, as it is a helpful bit of advice that can be applied to a scenario that happens on 100% of all flights: sitting. The second, however, addresses a catastrophic scenario that is EXTRAORDINARILY rare. (My totally unscientific Google research indicates that “ditching,” the only way your plane can end up in the water with you still alive, is less than a one-in-a-million occurrence.)

I wonder if the benefit of reminding passengers of a single step they could take in a specific type of super-rare emergency really warrants constantly reminding of the possibility of such an event. My mind read those two sentences as, “We could experience turbulence,” and “We could crash into the OCEAN, OMG!” Just imagine if the home screen of your cellphone always said, “Lock your phone when not in use,” and “Text GSF to 011 in case of phone-ignited gas station fire.”

Also, how did the message about the cushions win out over other, possibly more useful safety info like, say, the emergency landing brace position? Because it’s short?
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And then, boarding a different flight, I saw that the safety information cards were stuck into the tops of the seats like this, instead of hidden away in the seat-pockets as they usually are:

I got sort of excited by this, thinking that it was a change in airline policy toward passenger engagement with the safety information. Having the cards like this, and requiring each passenger to move their own card from here to the pocket in front of them would change the act of looking at the card from opt-in (passengers have to first decide to pull it from the pocket) to forced-choice (passengers have it in their hand, and then have to decide whether to look at it or not).

The web equivalent would be changing it from this:

to this:

My nerdy excitement was for naught, however, because it turned out the cleaning crew had just accidentally left them like this, and the flight staff quickly tucked them all back into the seat pockets.

Perhaps if they could guarantee more people looked at the safety card, they wouldn’t need to inscribe scary safety messages everywhere?

I’m not sure why elevators seem to be magnets for confusing interfaces (although I probably could take some guesses). To add another example to the list, my friend Scott recently sent me this picture:

How great is that button? Apparently it was on a wall all by itself, with nothing at all to indicate what happens when it is pushed. It reminds me of something from a kids’ fantasy novel—a magical, solitary button tempting you with unknown consequences.

Does it call the fire department? Does it ring the alarm? Does it send the elevator to the ground floor and lock it there? All three? Maybe it whisks you back in time or teleports you to a nearby park. Does it matter what it does? Perhaps all you truly need to know is when to press it.

I personally think it would be helpful to know what it does, in case that behavior might be useful in some circumstance other than a fire. For example, is it safe to press the fire button if there’s an earthquake? But maybe it’s just that my curiosity has gotten the best of me. If I had been in that elevator I would have been severely tempted to push that button JUST to find out what it does.

What do you think—is it fine to display only when to use the button, or should they also let people know what it does?

This is the LCD info display in the dashboard of my mom’s 2002 Toyota Avalon. (Please excuse the blurry iPhone photo.)

During my last visit, I think I spent too much time in the car, because that display really started to bug me. I just cannot for the life of me imagine a designer could look at it and think, “Yep, that’s finished. Put it into production!” Maybe no designers were involved or empowered, but that display makes no sense to me. Here’s a clearer recreation:

NOTHING in it aligns with anything else! It’s like someone just dropped things in and pushed them around until they filled up the space, leaving them tantalizingly close to lined-up, but not quite. Why on earth isn’t the temperature either left- or right-aligned with the clock? And why is the date so enormous, but yet not the same size as the time? And after dedicating so much space to the date (which only changes once a day, after all), five other features are jammed into the bottom right corner, and then not right-aligned with the date. Looking at all these odd gaps and edges makes my brain itch.

And on top of all that, the odometer is in a teensy tiny, non-backlit LCD area below this large display, which means, among other things, that you can’t read it at night. (My mom really hates that.)

So I decided to take a take a crack at fixing the large LCD display layout. This is not a true redesign. I’m giving Toyota the benefit of the doubt on the relative importance of items (except the date). Also, it doesn’t seem fair to say, “Use a better screen technology!” which would allow me to do things very differently. Not that a drastic redesign isn’t called for—as you can see here the whole dash really needs (and has probably since gotten) a ground-up rethinking. I just wanted to try to work within my understanding of the original designer’s constraints—technology, size, and (mostly) data—and bring some order to it. Here is my take:

I aligned the elements as best I could. I made the date significantly smaller and added in the odometer. This meant removing a few of the display toggle options, but I felt this was a reasonable trade-off for the increase in odometer usability and general cleanliness. Also, following Tufte’s principle of maximizing data-ink, I removed the heavy outline around the compass.

I’m sure it’s not perfect—I only worked on it for one evening. But at least it doesn’t make my brain itch.

Do you have more suggestions? A better solution? Or do you love the original? Let me know!

Perhaps it only goes down, Alice in Wonderland style.

This is the view through the doorway after the Oakland airport security screening. I encountered it while traveling this week and it gave me a chuckle. Only after I walked past the sign, halfway to the far escalator and then turned left, could I finally see an actual elevator, tucked underneath and between flanking staircases. So I guess the sign is there to reassure travelers that, yes, there will be an elevator somewhere soon.

Quick–can you figure out how to use this microwave to nuke your leftovers for 30 seconds?

Maybe you guessed that you could press the circle-thingy to pop it out, twist it to 30 seconds, then press Start. Good guess but, sorry, no. The knob does pop out when you press it, but nothing happens when you turn it.

This microwave belongs to my mother-in-law, and it stumps everyone who has not either read the manual or been trained by someone who has. (Second guess: You can use “Quick Min” to start the microwave immediately cooking for one minute, but then “More/Less” only lets you add whole minutes, and again, turning the knob does nothing.)

Let’s back up – who designs a microwave with no number pad on it?

Researching this post I discovered that this microwave is supposedly great at sensor cooking. So you should only have to press the “Sensor Cook” button (top right), and the microwave figures out the rest.  Did you know that? I didn’t. But I’m pretty sure that the VAST majority of the time people use microwaves, they expect to enter a cook time, especially when using an unfamiliar oven. In that case, what does the designer leave us with?

A pretty, recessed knob! Circular controls are cool!! And it save the real-estate of 10 buttons!!! That’s it. No hints, no numbers, no backups but the manual.

“Cool” and “clean” are the only rationale I can imagine for putting the number entry into knob form. Well, that and then you don’t need to memorize those Fitts’ Law shortcuts.  Although even without those, a number pad beats the knob for efficiency – it’s just not humanly possible to turn the knob to the correct time without overshooting it at least once. That is, IF you can figure out how to get the knob to produce numbers in the first place. Okay, okay, fine, I’ll tell you the secret:

You have to push “Power Level” first (once for 100%, twice for 90%, etc.), THEN you can use the dial. There isn’t even any visual cue that the knob will now work – just a scrolling message that says “set time.”

I am simultaneously fascinated and appalled by this lack of concern for novice users. The designers of this microwave interface have made the most basic and fundamental scenario impossible to figure out without the manual, and they’ve gotten away with it! My mother-in-law now knows the trick, but every new visitor, family member, and renter who wants to use her microwave has to go through the embarrassment of asking for help after failing to figure out the simplest of tasks.

I guess the moral around here lately is don’t mess with the number pad!

Let’s see… Phones, calculators, computers, and almost every other number input device have THREE numbers to a row. This machine has FIVE snacks to a row, and they are numbered by the row, column grid. So what are the designers of this vending machine to do but put their number buttons FOUR to a row, of course!

This is the vending machine in my office. Entering the correct number for the snack you want requires an astonishing amount of mental processing. And when the snacks were free, there were always at least two unwanted items hanging out in the bin below.

How many of those cards in your wallet are loyalty cards? You know, the ones that give you special coupons at a specific store, or when they’re punched ten times get you a freebie. Probably quite a few, right? Most of us have one or two credit cards, a bank card, an ID, and the REST of those cards bulking up your wallet are loyalty cards of some kind.

I recently spotted a great hack in practice at a local coffee-house (the Cow’s End in Venice) that gets around that problem. The customers simply stash their loyalty cards (the punch-for-a-freebie kind) in different nooks and crannies all around the shop. This obviously requires the proprietors’ consent, and each customer is responsible for remembering where they put their card, but it usually results in a great experience.

Picking a special place to stash my card, remembering that spot, and finding it there when I need it gives me a special connection with the physical space and builds my trust in the business. All of those cards peeking out of corners is a visual manifestation of the large coffee-house community. I also appreciate the convenience of not having to worry about remembering to bring my card with me. I’ve seen people squeal with glee when they find their card after a year away.

This obviously only works for single-location stores with relatively small clientele. It wouldn’t work well for Walmart, or for Starbucks. But for a little coffee-house trying to use it’s local community loyalty to COMPETE with Starbucks, it seems perfect.

Perhaps this Noah’s Bagels is built on a singularity in space-time wherein two different groups of people can occupy one space without discomfort or confusion.

I see this place almost every day and am both amused by the poor setup and impressed by the lengths the owners of the dumpster have gone to in order to clarify who should have access to it.

The dumpster is accessed by this driveway, which is the driveway that belongs to the building on the right (behind the van). The dumpster, however belongs to the building on the left (past the sedan).

The fencing was supposed to keep the dumpter more secure, I think, and separate it from the cars in the parking lot in which it technically lives, but it only reinforces the impression that it is actually a part of the driveway.

This is some serious instructional/error messaging. I bet they wouldn’t need it if they were able to fix the underlying design issue.