I have a problem with petrol pumps. The older ones anyway. They are hard to use, and do not give enough user feedback in my opinion. The gap between the trigger and the handle is too far away on many of the pumps. Now, I have normal sized hand (I think), and sometimes I still struggle to reach the trigger to pump the fuel into my car. I feel I have to virtually stretch my hand to it's maximum hand span just to get my fingers around it. And when I manage to do this, I can only just fit my fingers around the trigger. Imagine someone with small hands trying to use this! They would almost have to use two hands. Additionally, the trigger does not push far enough in, leaving the user questioning whether the fuel is actually being pumped into the tank or not. Some of the newer, updated fuel pumps are better, where the user actually feels like they are doing something, however not many petrol stations have been updated. Also, the fuel pipe is not flexible enough. Sometimes I have to contort and pull and twist the head of the pump just to get it into the mouth of the tank. I may be being pedantic, however if I am having troubles with this, then I can only assume other people are having trouble with this too. Pumping fuel into one's car is a regular occurrence, and therefore should be designed for the user a lot better. Further more, petrol stations are just plain ugly. There is no aesthetic appeal in to a petrol station what-so-ever. It is industrial and boring and is an eyesore in the community.
My second rant comes in the form if my television control at home. I have a Sony Bravia in my living room. Now I am not saying this is a bad T.V, not at all, in fact is is a very good T.V and I feel very privileged to have one, however the user interaction of the remote control is horrible. Firstly, there are too many buttons. Way too many buttons. The user is lost in just turning on the product. Secondly, there are two on/off buttons. One is to turn on the television, and the other is to turn on the amp. The two buttons are only differentiated by the shape. Way to create even more confusion for the user!
Secondly, the T.V is controlled by the amp, even though the amp does not need to be on. Because the entire system is linked up, the amp must be on the 'T.V' setting to turn on the actual T.V. other setting include radio and DVD player and Foxtel etc. Another major flaw in this remote design is that the volume control buttons don't work unless you press the "T.V" button at the top left hand corner which glows red when you do. This takes a considerable amount of learning from the user, and first time users are completely out of their element. I think the reason why it is so complex is that Sony have tried to pile all of the user interface to control every system, from the T.V to the surround sound system into one singular remote and at the same time make it as small and compact as possible. However they fail at this because the size of the remote is huge. It is very very long and inconvenient. And it does too many things, and does not do them successfully either I feel.
These are only two products that have bad user interaction that I feel are suitable for this topic. I could continue, however I won't.
/End Rant.
Razan Sappideen
My bad, I wrote secondly twice in the bottom paragraph.
ReplyDeleteAlso when you use the parameter of "/" you don't need to type "End" because / does it for you. lol
ReplyDeletePetrol pump handle things - worst thing ever. I myself have little hands and often find I have to use two hands to just fill up, or yes the stretch of my hand to some crazy spread amazes me! Now not knowing too much of the design of this, but I can only assume that they might do this to make people focus on what they are doing as Petrol/Gas can be dangerous.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah what is it with all of them twisted together? I often wonder if some douche from the time before thought it would be funny to cross all three types of petrol things over so that you had to untangle them! i don't see how difficult it is to put the correct coloured one back where you got it from, neatly. must we teach these petrol noobs how to do this with diagrams?
sigh... maybe one of us will be one to change the way users interact with petrol pumps...heck they have put TVs there now with ads - defeats the purpose of the stupid handle on the pump if it was meant to make us focus.
didn't they make a foam model before hand?
- mote
They obviously didn't make foam models. Peter and Robbie would be so disappointed....
ReplyDeleteWhen I'm paying $1.40 per litre for petrol, I want my experience of my purchase to be at least somewhat comfortable. Raz I agree; it seems that human factors have been neglected when it comes to designing these pump handles. I think sometimes they forget that women drive too (not saying that you have women hands Raz).
But there are more aspects of petrol pumps that I find very annoying. We live in the 21st century and you'd expect all of them to have buttons where you can preset amounts of money or litres of petrols you want to fill up. Occasionally I will get a pump without preset functions and I quickly find myself playing a little game with the pump to see how close to $20 dollars I can get without going over. No one wants to pay $19.96 worth of petrol. Furthermore, some pumps have yet to make the transition to LCD displays and still have those 'flip clock' analogue displays which are so much harder to read from an angle.
Raz, I also have a Bravia TV with a similar remote. I personally haven't had any issues with it. Although I do agree that it may have too many buttons, I found that I quickly discovered what buttons I needed to used and those that were relevant to me. Different people have different needs. While you may deem some functions and buttons useless, other may find them convenient.
-Phi Do
Yeah Phi, about the remote, I also have quickly learned which buttons are useful and which buttons are not, however my concern is for people who have not used this type of remote before. If they were over at my house, then I would have sit there and set everything up for them instead of the controls being straight forward for them to use. What I am trying to say is that the learning curve for the use of this product is too complex. They need to simplify is some how.
ReplyDelete