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I take it you've never used a Japanese rice cooker? They have far more than one function -- aside from making steamed rice, you can make rice porridge, congee,
by cyphar 6y ago
I take it you've never used a Japanese rice cooker? They have far more than one function -- aside from making steamed rice, you can make rice porridge, congee, steam other foods, and some can even be used to bake cakes. Not to mention you can time-delay the cooking to specify when you want the rice to be ready (which means it also has a clock). These are just the features my middle-of-the-road rice cooker can do -- more expensive models have even more features.
So the buttons are serving a purpose, the question is whether it's better to have more buttons or more touch-screens or other "less crammed" designs. Aesthetic concerns aside (personally I've gradually grown more fond of the "crammed" designs as having their own aesthetic), buttons are also practically better because they always do exactly one thing -- meaning it's easier to learn and use for most people (including older and vision-impaired users). If the cost of having less buttons is that users have to learn how to navigate a set of menus for each appliance they own (many of which will have rubbish UIs) then I'll take the extra buttons. I also like that my rice cooker beeps when it's done -- it reminds me to go fluff the rice (or acts as a signal that it's time to have dinner).
Cars are possibly the best argument for physical-button-based designs -- because you usually operate them without looking at them! Touch-screens or any other complicated but "less cluttered" design just means that you can't use them in that setting. I get anxiety looking at the Tesla dashboard -- maybe the reason they're developing self-driving cars is so that you can operate the dashboard without crashing?
- julianlam 6y agoI have an orthogonal approach to rice cookers. I find that the extra features are pointless and were added purely to differentiate themselves from competitors (or even between models themselves). Of the people I know who use rice cookers, they all use it to make rice, but usage of the other features drops significantly afterwards. After all, do you feel like using your rice cooker to make oatmeal? My ideal rice cooker has one button: a physical switch, and no timer.
- cyphar 6y agoMy rice cooker has different buttons for different kinds of rice (because they require different cooking times and temperature gradients), and rice porridge is quite nice for when you're sick -- I guess you thought I meant oat porridge in my original comment. And being able to have freshly-cooked rice at a fixed time (for breakfast or dinner) is super useful. I personally don't like congee (I didn't grow up with it), but my partner cooks it from time to time for herself. So we end up using most of the features pretty often. But I guess whether you'd find those features useful really depends on how often you eat rice at home -- my partner is from south-east Asia so rice is part of basically every meal. When the rice cooker is empty, I fill it at night and set it to finish cooking in time for lunch the next day (if you just cooked it and left it overnight it wouldn't be as fluffy). I don't use my rice cooker to bake cakes, but these kinds of features are born from the fact that in Japan very few households have full-sized ovens and so other appliances have to fill those needs.
- innocenat 6y agoMy rice cooker at home have setting for different type of rice. Because unless you know what you are doing, different type of rice (Japonica, Basmati, Thai Jasmine, etc) have a slightly different requirements in term of water volume, etc.