5 ms·

The world's worst toaster

48 points by bdfh42 19y ago

mynameishere 19y ago
What's the deal with toasters... And would you believe that the process of air travel is like...two steps: 1. Go to airport 2. Get on plane. My god, if human heavier-than-air flight is simpler than applying heat to bread, then we are all boned.
- ciscoriordan 19y ago
  True, but it takes a couple of minutes to make toast and the whole house-to-plane process takes forever. The airlines are still trying out different plane boarding techniques, with mixed degrees of success.
henning 19y ago
"It took me more than 11 clicks to send them $6." Upgrading an account in Backpack, 37Signals' web-based calendar/PIM/organizer thing, takes 4 clicks. Making it easy for people to give you more money on a regular basis is a good thing. Note that it takes roughly the same amount of effort to downgrade or cancel your account altogether.
jauco 19y ago
I guess it's to prevent phishing. If you have to take all the steps yourself instead of clicking on a link from the e-mail, the chances of someone being able to hijack a link are smaller. If it's always (1) click link, (2) enter credit card details. You are teaching your users to become victims of fraud.
jgrahamc 19y ago
The worst designed telephone: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/worst-designed-telephone-in-world.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/worst-designed-telephone-in-...
tptacek 19y ago
Man, Seth Godin can't even do a good job of reviewing a bad toaster. When writing a critical review, the bar is clearly set at what Amazon.com reviewers come up with. Godin should see where that bar is set for bad toasters: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00004R92D/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00004R92D/ref=cm_cr_dp... I note, with some smugness, that "DANGEROUS --- SHAME ON TOASTMASTER" is also a catchier title than "World's Worst Toaster".
PatrickMaloney 19y ago
There are plenty of bad toasters out there. Many products are designed (destroyed) as this toaster was with lots of extra super duper features in mind, thinking that users absolutely have to have the ability to do X...and y, a,b,and c. Then they hit you with all the options all at once. Yes build in that must have functionality but don't forsake intuitiveness. Don't mistake functionality with usability. By making a simple task more complex you do not necessarily increase customer safety (or satisfaction) and as henning notes so aptly, "Making it easy for people to give you more money on a regular basis is a good thing." In my experience air travel is more akin to the 11 click ebay example than a 2 step toaster.
dskhatri 19y ago
Reminds me of the Plantronics desk phone headsets. I don't know where they get the engineers to design these. Just a few examples of what's wrong: - the base station has a "configuration dial" that requires a flat object to insert into the slit to turn it - There are 2, yes 2, pairs of volume buttons on the base itself, AND one on the headset.. - The mute button on the headset has a sharp protrusion that literally pokes you in the finger when you try to push it.. Seth's post and experiences with such systems make me appreciate sites like tumblr and slinkset quite a lot. PDF user guide: http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/user_guides/Voyager510S_userguide_en.pdf http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/...).
brent 19y ago
So was this "star" marketer fooled by marketing? "It's pretty fancy and shiny and microprocessor controlled. And it makes toast." Shouldn't the criteria have been related to function: like 'I only have to insert toast and remove toast... it's one step shorter than old toasters'. As an aside, I'd love to post this on his blog, but that doesn't appear to be an option. Is accepting critical feedback in an open forum a risk not worth taking when marketing oneself?
phaedrus 19y ago
This sort of interface problem is common with clocks too. We have a clock at work that signals break time; it has four alarms but you have to manually turn them off. One time I had to be the one to turn it off, and I looked at the back. Four identical, round buttons - simply labelled "A", "B", "C", and "D". WTF? I need the manual to look up what the buttons do!
simplegeek 19y ago
Irony is that company that sold that Toaster made money. How ironic (and encouraging) is the fact that companies like eBay, Microsoft makes loads of money ;-) Feature-laden products sell. At the day end, we all want to acquire powerful things and you'll find very few powerful products in this world that were made keeping in mind the less is more philosophy.
dreish 19y ago
The GE microwave that came with my house is worse than I thought was possible. It includes an appointment scheduler (!) and has some sort of message button I've never pressed for fear of being reminded of what my voice sounds like. Apparently the designers thought there was a large underserved market of families whose entire lives revolve around their microwaves. All the buttons to support these extra features mainly make it less convenient to use for heating up food. The worst feature by far is its insistence on having its clock set. Every time I lose electricity, which happens every few weeks in my neighborhood, it refuses to cook anything until I: 1. Press "clock" to set the time (even though all other functions are disabled). 2. Enter the time in HHMM format. 3. Press "start" (but don't get too excited about actually "starting" anything yet). 4. Locate the single-purpose "AM/PM" button and press that either once or twice. 5. Press "start" again. 6. Enter the date in MMDDYY format. 7. And again press "start". What this means is that you can always calculate how long it has been since the first time I zapped my morning instant oatmeal after the last power outage by subtracting from the current time and date displayed by the microwave: 2011-11-11 11:11 a.m. So, yeah, don't design a web site like that.
- seiji 19y ago
  I believe I had that same microwave. Here's a hint: Hold down the 0 button for a few seconds and the time display will turn off :)
  - dreish 19y ago
    If that works after the next outage, I owe you my life, or at least 0.002% of it.
- rbanffy 19y ago
  If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD. Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea. I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.
- rbanffy 19y ago
  If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD. Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea. I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.
antiismist 19y ago
As a counter-point, I have the world's best microwave. There is only one button that I use - the add 1 minute button. Put the food in, hit the "add one" button once or twice, and that is it. The microwave starts automatically. As far as I can tell, it took 40 years of microwave UI development to get to this point.
- graywh 19y ago
  Used to use a microwave with only 3 buttons, start (that performed similarly), defrost, and cancel. The cancel button worked as you expect and the defrost wasn't hard to use. The start button added 30 seconds until it got to 3.5 minutes, then 60 seconds. Easiest thing to use ever. My microwave now has a similar quick start feature of hitting 1-6 for that many minutes and a plus 30 second button. This is how we operate it about 90% of the time.
- TrevorJ 19y ago
  I had a microwave once that only had one nob that you turned and that was it. I've never seen another setup that was that simple and effective on a microwave.
  - jmtulloss 19y ago
    That's how my current microwave is, and it's great. Not only that, but the numbers on the knob no longer have any bearing on actual time increments, so I don't have to think at all. Just turn the knob an arbitrary amount, and hopefully I'll take it out on time. Brilliant.
  - antiismist 19y ago
    OK, so the ideal microwave has just 1 nob. You turn it, and that gives you the time. And as soon as you let go, it starts up. Can't get simpler or easier to use than that. For the nob, I would want some type of exponential scale for time. Most people care about the difference between two and three minutes, but the difference between 20 and 21 minutes is inconsequential. Would that be confusing though?
aneesh 19y ago
Even better than that toaster, when I tried to reinstall my wireless driver on Windows a while back (since then, I have seen the light and switched to Ubuntu), the new driver wouldn't install because a few files were missing. "Please click here for help [online]." I kid you not.

48 points by bdfh42 19y ago

What's the deal with toasters... And would you believe that the process of air travel is like...two steps: 1. Go to airport 2. Get on plane. My god, if human heavier-than-air flight is simpler than applying heat to bread, then we are all boned.

ciscoriordan 19y ago
True, but it takes a couple of minutes to make toast and the whole house-to-plane process takes forever. The airlines are still trying out different plane boarding techniques, with mixed degrees of success.

henning 19y ago

"It took me more than 11 clicks to send them $6." Upgrading an account in Backpack, 37Signals' web-based calendar/PIM/organizer thing, takes 4 clicks. Making it easy for people to give you more money on a regular basis is a good thing. Note that it takes roughly the same amount of effort to downgrade or cancel your account altogether.

jauco 19y ago

I guess it's to prevent phishing. If you have to take all the steps yourself instead of clicking on a link from the e-mail, the chances of someone being able to hijack a link are smaller. If it's always (1) click link, (2) enter credit card details. You are teaching your users to become victims of fraud.

jgrahamc 19y ago

The worst designed telephone: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/worst-designed-telephone-in-world.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/worst-designed-telephone-in-...

tptacek 19y ago

Man, Seth Godin can't even do a good job of reviewing a bad toaster. When writing a critical review, the bar is clearly set at what Amazon.com reviewers come up with. Godin should see where that bar is set for bad toasters: http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00004R92D/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?%5Fencoding=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B00004R92D/ref=cm_cr_dp... I note, with some smugness, that "DANGEROUS --- SHAME ON TOASTMASTER" is also a catchier title than "World's Worst Toaster".

PatrickMaloney 19y ago

There are plenty of bad toasters out there. Many products are designed (destroyed) as this toaster was with lots of extra super duper features in mind, thinking that users absolutely have to have the ability to do X...and y, a,b,and c. Then they hit you with all the options all at once. Yes build in that must have functionality but don't forsake intuitiveness. Don't mistake functionality with usability. By making a simple task more complex you do not necessarily increase customer safety (or satisfaction) and as henning notes so aptly, "Making it easy for people to give you more money on a regular basis is a good thing." In my experience air travel is more akin to the 11 click ebay example than a 2 step toaster.

dskhatri 19y ago

Reminds me of the Plantronics desk phone headsets. I don't know where they get the engineers to design these. Just a few examples of what's wrong: - the base station has a "configuration dial" that requires a flat object to insert into the slit to turn it - There are 2, yes 2, pairs of volume buttons on the base itself, AND one on the headset.. - The mute button on the headset has a sharp protrusion that literally pokes you in the finger when you try to push it.. Seth's post and experiences with such systems make me appreciate sites like tumblr and slinkset quite a lot. PDF user guide: http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/user_guides/Voyager510S_userguide_en.pdf http://www.plantronics.com/media/media_resources/literature/...).

brent 19y ago

So was this "star" marketer fooled by marketing? "It's pretty fancy and shiny and microprocessor controlled. And it makes toast." Shouldn't the criteria have been related to function: like 'I only have to insert toast and remove toast... it's one step shorter than old toasters'. As an aside, I'd love to post this on his blog, but that doesn't appear to be an option. Is accepting critical feedback in an open forum a risk not worth taking when marketing oneself?

phaedrus 19y ago

This sort of interface problem is common with clocks too. We have a clock at work that signals break time; it has four alarms but you have to manually turn them off. One time I had to be the one to turn it off, and I looked at the back. Four identical, round buttons - simply labelled "A", "B", "C", and "D". WTF? I need the manual to look up what the buttons do!

simplegeek 19y ago

Irony is that company that sold that Toaster made money. How ironic (and encouraging) is the fact that companies like eBay, Microsoft makes loads of money ;-) Feature-laden products sell. At the day end, we all want to acquire powerful things and you'll find very few powerful products in this world that were made keeping in mind the less is more philosophy.

dreish 19y ago

The GE microwave that came with my house is worse than I thought was possible. It includes an appointment scheduler (!) and has some sort of message button I've never pressed for fear of being reminded of what my voice sounds like. Apparently the designers thought there was a large underserved market of families whose entire lives revolve around their microwaves. All the buttons to support these extra features mainly make it less convenient to use for heating up food. The worst feature by far is its insistence on having its clock set. Every time I lose electricity, which happens every few weeks in my neighborhood, it refuses to cook anything until I: 1. Press "clock" to set the time (even though all other functions are disabled). 2. Enter the time in HHMM format. 3. Press "start" (but don't get too excited about actually "starting" anything yet). 4. Locate the single-purpose "AM/PM" button and press that either once or twice. 5. Press "start" again. 6. Enter the date in MMDDYY format. 7. And again press "start". What this means is that you can always calculate how long it has been since the first time I zapped my morning instant oatmeal after the last power outage by subtracting from the current time and date displayed by the microwave: 2011-11-11 11:11 a.m. So, yeah, don't design a web site like that.

seiji 19y ago
I believe I had that same microwave. Here's a hint: Hold down the 0 button for a few seconds and the time display will turn off :)
- dreish 19y ago
  If that works after the next outage, I owe you my life, or at least 0.002% of it.
rbanffy 19y ago
If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD. Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea. I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.
rbanffy 19y ago
If it's a toaster, it probably can run NetBSD. Since you don't report any crashes, it's a plausible idea. I don't think it's possible to design a webite as cruel as this microwave.

antiismist 19y ago

As a counter-point, I have the world's best microwave. There is only one button that I use - the add 1 minute button. Put the food in, hit the "add one" button once or twice, and that is it. The microwave starts automatically. As far as I can tell, it took 40 years of microwave UI development to get to this point.

graywh 19y ago
Used to use a microwave with only 3 buttons, start (that performed similarly), defrost, and cancel. The cancel button worked as you expect and the defrost wasn't hard to use. The start button added 30 seconds until it got to 3.5 minutes, then 60 seconds. Easiest thing to use ever. My microwave now has a similar quick start feature of hitting 1-6 for that many minutes and a plus 30 second button. This is how we operate it about 90% of the time.
TrevorJ 19y ago
I had a microwave once that only had one nob that you turned and that was it. I've never seen another setup that was that simple and effective on a microwave.
- jmtulloss 19y ago
  That's how my current microwave is, and it's great. Not only that, but the numbers on the knob no longer have any bearing on actual time increments, so I don't have to think at all. Just turn the knob an arbitrary amount, and hopefully I'll take it out on time. Brilliant.
- antiismist 19y ago
  OK, so the ideal microwave has just 1 nob. You turn it, and that gives you the time. And as soon as you let go, it starts up. Can't get simpler or easier to use than that. For the nob, I would want some type of exponential scale for time. Most people care about the difference between two and three minutes, but the difference between 20 and 21 minutes is inconsequential. Would that be confusing though?

aneesh 19y ago

Even better than that toaster, when I tried to reinstall my wireless driver on Windows a while back (since then, I have seen the light and switched to Ubuntu), the new driver wouldn't install because a few files were missing. "Please click here for help [online]." I kid you not.