IH01MonicaTanza
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
[edit] Good Designs and Bad Designs in Our Everyday Lives
[edit] Good Design: IKEA Futon
For a college student using the living room as a bedroom, this futon has helped me quickly transform the room from a bedroom to a living room. It is a good design because it is very functional in its simplicity. When it is down as a bed, the only thing you can do is lift the bottom. Because this is the only option for movement, there will be no confusion about how to use it. Once tilted, you push the bottom up until you hear it click, once for recline mode, twice for sitting mode. Then you just let the bottom down and it rights itself to the desired position. If you forget and set the wrong mode (say you put it in recline mode when you wanted it in sitting mode), you just lift the bottom again and click it again. To return the futon to sleeping mode, you just lift the bottom from whichever mode it is in and push until it clicks. You can make no errors in using this futon that would be irreversible. Also, its use is simplified because you always will follow the same course of action in using it (lifting the bottom until it clicks) regardless of what mode you are starting in and what mode you wish to end up in. Not only is it simple and easy to understand how to use this futon, it is also physically easy to use. Many futons on the market are heavy, therefore requiring that only a strong person can use them. Not only is this futon very light, it does not require that you actually lift anything, you are just pushing and rotating, therefore anyone, regardless of strength, can use it. This simplicity makes this a good design.
[edit] Bad Design: Sink Faucets
Certain sinks, like these ones I found in Wurster Hall, have bad faucet design.
The reason these faucets are flawed is because they do not allow enough room to wash your hands. When your hand is completely under the flow of water, it will be hitting the sink bowl. This makes me feel uncomfortable because I feel like my hands are not getting clean. This design has no trade-offs such as manufacturing cost, reliability or safety, it is just a careless design with no thought to space tolerances. It can be seen in the picture below that my hand is hitting the sink well. You can also see that there is plenty of unused room in the middle of the sink well. The faucet could easily be extended into this space.
By making the obvious improvement of having the faucet extend further into the sink well, people’s hands will fit completely underneath without hitting the sink well. Not only is this a better use of the space of the sink well, this will result in cleaner hands and happier people.
