Figure 1: Electric kettle
Issue 1: My electric kettle has a start/stop button, which is inefficient and redundant. A more efficient design would allow pressing one of the temperature settings to automatically warm the water, but instead, I had to complete the extra step of pressing the start/stop button. (Type: Usability)
Issue 2: I also found the keep warm button to be ineffective. I have to press the temperature setting and the keep warm button again after pouring water if I want to keep the water warm. It would be better for the device to be able to sustain the keep warm toggle until turned off. (Type: Usability and Efficiency)
Figure 2: Stove controls
Issue 1: A more efficient and learnable design here would be arranging the controls in a square that corresponds to the stovetop positions. (Type: Learnability and Efficiency)
Issue 2: There is also a safety issue, as we are dealing with a gas stove. Turning on the wrong stove could turn into a dangerous problem. (Type: Safety)
Figure 3: Light switches outside of a bathroom Figure 4: Light switches inside of a bathroom
Issue: It's impossible to tell which light switch does what unless you test out each switch and see what happens. The placements are also inconsistent--there is one switch outside the bathroom that turns on one of the vents, and there are an additional two switches that turn on the other two vents. (Type: Learnability and Efficiency)