The attack of the badly designed shower fittings (part 1)

I first read Donald Norman's the Design of Everyday Things a decade or so ago. It made me realise that whenever I can't use a kettle or a telephone or even a door it's not my fault. Somebody, somewhere, made a poor design decision. It's never user error, always designer error. Ever since then I've kept an eye out for atrocious designer errors.

Last week I was staying in a hotel in the South West of England. Hotel shower fittings are notoriously badly designed and every badly designed shower fitting is badly designed in its own way. The one in this hotel room was, however, the worst I've seen in a long time.

I'll give $50 of Amazon vouchers to the first person who can tell me how this fitting is meant to work and why I found this one particularly bad (note you need to do both for a chance of winning). I'll also give $50 of vouchers to what I judge is the best design critique, at my discretion.

BTW, based on a straw poll here at Red Gate I think my money is safe.

Here it is:

Post your answers as comments to this post ...

Next week I'll tell you why this design is so bad. Subscribe to the RSS feed and don't miss out.

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Comments

[Dave D.]

The top handle controls the water temperature while the bottom handle controls turning the water on and off.

[Kyle H]

The top handle controls flow (counterclockwise = more, clockwise = less)
The bottom handle controls temperature (probably pointing left = hot, right = cold)

[Austin Salonen]

It looks more like a puzzle... If they are independent handles, you're just given more options than you probably need. However, the two handles don't appear to be totally independent of each other. The smaller circle looks like it may have some effect on larger circle (perhaps intentionally or by aging parts) so you may get unexpected behavior when modifying "one" setting.

Also, the tubing from the spigot to the shower head could interfere with the dials.

[Chad Sellers]

Flow is controlled by the relative position of the handles, meaning if the handles are on top of one another then you get max flow and if they're sufficiently away from one another (as pictured) then water is not flowing. Temperature is controlled by the position around the dial.

[Justin James]

It's a red herring. One handle controls the flow of hot water, the other controls the flow of cold water. I bet, to make it extra confusing, that they rotate in opposite directions, too.

J.Ja

[Dan A]

It's not actually a shower control, it's one of those natty bits of functional modern art. The inner front handle shows the current hour of the day; the outer handle indicates the relative position of Venus in the sky.

[Pat McGee]

One handle controls the flow rate, the other controls the temperature. Without experimenting, I don't know of a way to tell which is which. Which is, I think, one of the two reasons why you disliked it so much.

The other reason I think you disliked it is that there is probably friction between the two handles. That is, turning one turns the other one. So, in order to control one variable independently, you have to use two hands, one holding the undesired handle still.

[ajs]

Plus it looks like there's a button on top. I suspect that this is not just a shower, but also a bath and you have to turn on the water then hold down the button to get the water to flow to the shower instead of the faucet for the bath.

[Jason McDonald]

It appears that the top of the fixture has a capped off pipe. Is one handle to control where the water should flow while the other controls temperature? It would be a 50/50 guess as to which one controls where the water flows but I'd go with the smaller one.

Besides that, the shower host must be pretty long if you are a normal sized person and wish to wash your hair standing up - I'd think this would be wired to the top portion of the fixture...

[Jason McDonald]

One more thought...

It actually looks like this fixture is meant to be behind the wall with only the handles portion sticking out.