High-Tech Hotel
I was in Las Vegas last summer for a friend's bachelor party. We stayed in a hotel that was fairly new; it had just opened up a few month's prior to our stay. There were a lot of very cutting edge features in our hotel room.
Light switches have always represented an interesting design challenge. If you have a bank of light switches in your home or office, chances are good it took you a little while to figure out which one mapped to which. There's simply no conceivable way of creating a light switch panel where the light each switch controls is self-evident. It always requires a learning curve.
There were more than light switches in our room; switches controlled a fair number of things. I went to open the curtains on our window, and discovered they were motorized. There was no switch anywhere on the wall near the windows. After looking for it for a while, I gave up. Later, my very, very drunk roommate (who could barely stand) was fumbling to turn out the lights using the buttons above the nightstand. The curtains opened up.
The next day, I was examining the bottled water and bags of nuts they put in your room, and they'll charge you if they disappear. I went to pick one up and my roommate (whose credit card bill was on file) freaked out on me. Apparently, they're seated on top of a weight sensor, and if anything is removed from the sensor, you get charged for the item...even if you put it back later. (They have to explain this to every guest that checks in.)
Our first morning there, we spent about 10 minutes looking for the "Do Not Disturb" tag to hang on the door. Not finding it, we gave up and left for the day. While we were out, I got to thinking that it would make way more sense to build a "Do Not Disturb" tag right into the door, instead of deal with a hang tag. When we returned that afternoon, sure enough, there was a small, unmarked panel next to the door to our hotel room. It wasn't immediately clear what it did, but with the push of the right button, a small "DND" light came on outside our room.
There's a large chasm between functional design and usability of new technology, and the average user who is supposed to figure out how it works. I'm not sure why the bridge across that chasm is so flimsy, because you'd expect these things to be tested before they're released into the wild. At least it makes for great comedy.
Light switches have always represented an interesting design challenge. If you have a bank of light switches in your home or office, chances are good it took you a little while to figure out which one mapped to which. There's simply no conceivable way of creating a light switch panel where the light each switch controls is self-evident. It always requires a learning curve.
There were more than light switches in our room; switches controlled a fair number of things. I went to open the curtains on our window, and discovered they were motorized. There was no switch anywhere on the wall near the windows. After looking for it for a while, I gave up. Later, my very, very drunk roommate (who could barely stand) was fumbling to turn out the lights using the buttons above the nightstand. The curtains opened up.
The next day, I was examining the bottled water and bags of nuts they put in your room, and they'll charge you if they disappear. I went to pick one up and my roommate (whose credit card bill was on file) freaked out on me. Apparently, they're seated on top of a weight sensor, and if anything is removed from the sensor, you get charged for the item...even if you put it back later. (They have to explain this to every guest that checks in.)
Our first morning there, we spent about 10 minutes looking for the "Do Not Disturb" tag to hang on the door. Not finding it, we gave up and left for the day. While we were out, I got to thinking that it would make way more sense to build a "Do Not Disturb" tag right into the door, instead of deal with a hang tag. When we returned that afternoon, sure enough, there was a small, unmarked panel next to the door to our hotel room. It wasn't immediately clear what it did, but with the push of the right button, a small "DND" light came on outside our room.
There's a large chasm between functional design and usability of new technology, and the average user who is supposed to figure out how it works. I'm not sure why the bridge across that chasm is so flimsy, because you'd expect these things to be tested before they're released into the wild. At least it makes for great comedy.