IH01-PennyYuan

From IEOR 170 Spring 2007

Good Design

This is a coffee grinder. Its purpose is to grind coffee beans into ground coffee to use in a coffee maker. It's a good design because it's

- simple (only one button to push to grind

- safe (only one way to put cap on to ensure grindability

- easy to store

- electric cord is stored inside grinder body (twist to wind up cord and pull to unravel)

Bad Design

This is the inside of my apartment's heater. It's a bad design because of it's complexity and unclear directions. The user is supposed to push and turn the black dial until it hits a stop to let the gas flow and then press the red button for the pilot light to come on. After igniting the pilot light, the user must then relax the black dial halfway and turn the knob all the way to light the heater. It's also a bad design because after putting on the pilot light, the user must wait a couple of minutes for the gas to fully spread before turning the dial all the way. Because of this glitch and the lack of instructions for this mechanism, it took me about an hour to figure out how to use the heater!

Better Design

Here's a better design for the heater. Instead of pushing and relaxing the knob while also pushing the ignition button, it would be much easier to do it all in one go. If we consolidated all the controls, we can just have one knob that will automatically ignite the pilot light once it hits a certain section. Then after the pilot light ignites, the user just has to turn the control 180 degrees to start up the heater. Look at the example above. This is a simpler design and should be clearly labeled to avoid confusion.