Noticing the Design of Everyday Things

Fuse Box

Description

A metal box with switches that allow you to turn on and off the outlets in a given room throughout your house.

Critiquing

Learnability:
1. It is not easy to tell which room in your home you're turning on/off when looking at the switches, so it would take some time to know which switch corresponds to which room.
2. If you need to reset the power in a particular room, you have to make two to three maneuvers with each switch, which cannot be easily intuited from the design.
Safety:
1. Not knowing how to properly reset the power could leave you no choice but to endure a night in your room without electricity, something that is especially alarming when living in Boston during the winter.

Improving

Switch-Room Correspondence: I recommend including a map on the door of the fuse box where each house room is labeled by some number and the switch has the corresponding number. This would help the user quickly identify the right switch to turn on/off. Having a visual aid would help given that the resident would be more dimensionally familiar with their home.
Power Reset: I recommend including simple steps on top of the switches that explain how to reset the power in a room. If a house resident has never had to reset the power in their room, they can easily refer to those instructions and perform the steps.

Description

A digital lamp that illuminates your workspace and tells you the date and time.

Critiquing

Efficiency:
1. Clicking the button at the very bottom of the black screen takes you through the different brightness intensities in order from dimmest to brightest. Though this isn't a major time delay, there is no functionality that allows the user to go from one brightness level to another.
Safety:
1. The base of the lamp is not big relative to the upper body of the lamp. So, if you wish to adjust your lamp and it's at the edge of your desk, there is a risk of it falling and potentially breaking.

Improving

Light Intensity Settings: I recommend replacing the button with a slider. This does away with having to go through one entire cycle of light intensities before reaching your desired intensity. In addition, it gives you good visual aid for the light intensity.
Lamp Base: I recommend enlarging the base so that it firmly holds the lamp and prevents against accidentally knocking it down.

Description

A soap container with a button that you push to get soap when washing your hands.

Critiquing:

Learnability:
1. It is not clear from where you're supposed to grab the box to remove it from the wall when refilling it with soap. There's a tiny lid at the top that you must push in to grab the box from the inside and remove it from the wall. Even then, it is unclear in which diretion to pull the box to lift it, given that we can't see how it is hooked the wall.
Efficiency:
1. Below the tiny window that helps us see into the box, it is unclear what the soap level is. Therefore, it makes it somewhat difficult to tell if soap needs to be replaced, unless you actually test it out by attempting to put soap on your hands, which is not favorable if you're in a rush and you need to wash your hands.

Improving:

Removing the Box: I recommend adding a handle at the top that allows you to easily lift the box from its hook, since the original design does not have this functionality explicitly displayed.
Soap Level: I recommend making the bottom quarter of the box see-through. At that point, you can easily tell when the box runs out of soap or has low soap level worthy of replacement.