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

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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

[elian]

I think you should change your criterias before choosing another hotel :-)

[Mr. Flibble]

I think this has to do something utterly crazy for it to stand out amongst the myriad of appalling designs.

So maybe the front lever is attached to the rear one, so as you rotate the rear one the front one also rotates - not actually operating the front lever, just changing your understanding of where on and off is.

So what else... well there doesn't look to be a nice useful affordance of hot and cold, neither colour nor text.

But... I'm not sure that's crazy enough because you could probably work that out pretty quickly. This has to be one of those totally stumped kind of designs, so my hunch is that the affordance it gives is opposite to how it works. So... does it require you to pull the lever towards you to give you water?

Or maybe it contols the shower in the room next door ...or it dispenses chocolate or something.

Splendid.

[Dan]

One of the handles controls water pressure (on/off), and the other controls temperature. You don't know which handle does what, and you don't know which way to turn a handle to achieve your goal. You have to monkey with the handles while watching and touching the water to find the correct settings.

[Abhi]

I just noticed your blog(visiting from JoelonSoftware)...and noticed this chain but would like to leave my comments.
Maybe I have my understanding of "Design" wrong. I do not see anything wrong with the concept (which in my opinion is more of the "Design").
All the flaws you pointed out are in the execution or implementation of the design (of course I am writing this after reading everybody's comments). The lever weights dragging the other lever, the friction between the bearings etc are all the result of the wrong choices of the material. Too heavy? bad gaskets etc. They could even be a result of improper maintenance. It is a hotel after all and probably gets more use than the ones in homes. It needs to be cleaned (from the inside - cartridges etc) more often to counter salt buildup which damages gaskets.
The one design flaw I DO see is the fact that there is no proper marking which will stand the test of time and water (it either was not there at all or got washed off).
In the interest of conserving water I think it is a good design goal to have two controls - for flow and heat.
Almost all Cars have a similar dual ring design for windshield wiper control on the right hand side. The lever controls start or stop and usually a dial on the lever controls speed. The difference is that everything is clearly marked and the markings do not wear off very easily even after 10 years of use (at least in my honda accord).

[Door Handle Girl]

OK here's my guess. The back lever conrols the bath, of which there is none. The front lever when rotated controls flow not temperature. The temp is controlled by tilting the front lever which naturally effects the flow at the same time to it's a hard balancing act.. Shameless plug to some door handles that hopefully work better than this terrible shower handle!

All the best Jo (Norwich UK)