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My dad worked as a the head of an engineering department at Miele in Germany, and therefore my family would always get new appliances before they hit the market

by cyxxon 10y ago

My dad worked as a the head of an engineering department at Miele in Germany, and therefore my family would always get new appliances before they hit the market, to actually test them out. My mum hated it, of course, to always have to relearn new interfaces etc. And yes, one day our perfectly good microwave with just these two dieals was replaced by an abomination: tons of soft-touch buttons, digital clock, what have you. None of us could fathom why anyone would want such a UI/UX for this simple device... and we lobbied hard to get the old one back. Which we did.

drglitch 10y ago
Go give kudos to your dad and his colleagues, Miele are one of best designed appliances I've ever encountered (aside from that microwave). I successfully navigated washers, espresso machines, etc, set to operate in languages I do not speak and was still able to get them to do what I wanted with minimal effort
roel_v 10y ago
Well, I have one of those Miele soft touch things, and I'm ambivalent about them. I think about this several times per day, since the last 2.5 years, every time I use it; so this is not something I just came up with. First, the current implementation isn't rigorously thought out. For example, for most operations, you put in the food, then select time to cook, press 'start'; but for thawing, you select the food type, then it asks you 'put in food', and won't continue until you open and close the door. This annoys me to the point that I've contacted Miele several times, but nobody seems to even understand the problem. At one point they send a service technician over (I guess they were exasperated by my repeated calls) who didn't understand the problem either, which led to a Monty Python-esque scene of me saying variations of 'it should work differently!' and him saying 'it works as it should!'. So if your father still have contacts, please let him/they contact me - I'm sure that if only I could get through to the right person, they'd agree with me that it's a bug. Anyway, apart from these implementation issues, I think overall the concept of having a touch screen that guides the user with many tasks is an improvement over the two-dial system. It tells me exactly how long to heat and at what temperature, and the results are (much) better than I ever get from microwaves/ovens that make me decide that for myself. The downside are increased time-to-task for most common operations, and increased complexity in the UI. I think it's inevitable though; I don't see how you can still have the same UI guidance from the machine yet make it easier to learn. It's like my circular saw - the more expensive one I have now, has more buttons and levers than the $49.95 I has before. I have to think how to use it; the cheap one had an on/off button, that was it. But I do get consistently better results with the expensive one. There, too, I don't see how it can be made simpler - those additional controls just make for a better result. (if I wanted to start a flame war, I'd compare it here to Notepad vs Vim. Why use something complex like Vim when you can also program just as well with Notepad? And yet, I've been using Vim for well over 15 years.)
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  Well in the notepad vs. vim analogy it is because you can program just as well with Notepad until you can't and you don't know for sure when that can't state will be reached. Is it like that with the Miele?
  - roel_v 10y ago
    Yeah I think it is, when you put it that way. It depends on how you define 'can't'. I don't see any situations where you really can't do anything with Notepad that you can do with Vim. It's just a lot harder, to the point that it's no longer a realistic option. Same with the over - there is nothing you can't do with a 2-button one. It's just that at some point it becomes so hard that it's not a realistic option any more. Like, theoretically you can hold the temperature of a Dutch oven (the 17th century cast iron version with the 3 legs that you heat with charcoal) at exactly 170C for an hour. It's just very difficult. I can bake apple pies in my oven that I never was able to with a simpler over. So yeah - what it boils down to is, what is 'possibility'? 'Technically' possible, or 'realistically attainable by the average user'?

by cyxxon 10y ago

drglitch 10y ago

Go give kudos to your dad and his colleagues, Miele are one of best designed appliances I've ever encountered (aside from that microwave). I successfully navigated washers, espresso machines, etc, set to operate in languages I do not speak and was still able to get them to do what I wanted with minimal effort

roel_v 10y ago

Well, I have one of those Miele soft touch things, and I'm ambivalent about them. I think about this several times per day, since the last 2.5 years, every time I use it; so this is not something I just came up with. First, the current implementation isn't rigorously thought out. For example, for most operations, you put in the food, then select time to cook, press 'start'; but for thawing, you select the food type, then it asks you 'put in food', and won't continue until you open and close the door. This annoys me to the point that I've contacted Miele several times, but nobody seems to even understand the problem. At one point they send a service technician over (I guess they were exasperated by my repeated calls) who didn't understand the problem either, which led to a Monty Python-esque scene of me saying variations of 'it should work differently!' and him saying 'it works as it should!'. So if your father still have contacts, please let him/they contact me - I'm sure that if only I could get through to the right person, they'd agree with me that it's a bug. Anyway, apart from these implementation issues, I think overall the concept of having a touch screen that guides the user with many tasks is an improvement over the two-dial system. It tells me exactly how long to heat and at what temperature, and the results are (much) better than I ever get from microwaves/ovens that make me decide that for myself. The downside are increased time-to-task for most common operations, and increased complexity in the UI. I think it's inevitable though; I don't see how you can still have the same UI guidance from the machine yet make it easier to learn. It's like my circular saw - the more expensive one I have now, has more buttons and levers than the $49.95 I has before. I have to think how to use it; the cheap one had an on/off button, that was it. But I do get consistently better results with the expensive one. There, too, I don't see how it can be made simpler - those additional controls just make for a better result. (if I wanted to start a flame war, I'd compare it here to Notepad vs Vim. Why use something complex like Vim when you can also program just as well with Notepad? And yet, I've been using Vim for well over 15 years.)

bryanrasmussen 10y ago
Well in the notepad vs. vim analogy it is because you can program just as well with Notepad until you can't and you don't know for sure when that can't state will be reached. Is it like that with the Miele?
- roel_v 10y ago
  Yeah I think it is, when you put it that way. It depends on how you define 'can't'. I don't see any situations where you really can't do anything with Notepad that you can do with Vim. It's just a lot harder, to the point that it's no longer a realistic option. Same with the over - there is nothing you can't do with a 2-button one. It's just that at some point it becomes so hard that it's not a realistic option any more. Like, theoretically you can hold the temperature of a Dutch oven (the 17th century cast iron version with the 3 legs that you heat with charcoal) at exactly 170C for an hour. It's just very difficult. I can bake apple pies in my oven that I never was able to with a simpler over. So yeah - what it boils down to is, what is 'possibility'? 'Technically' possible, or 'realistically attainable by the average user'?