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These issues are everywhere if you bother to notice. My in-laws had a coffee maker with a built-in grinder. The grind function was default enabled, so if you we

These issues are everywhere if you bother to notice. My in-laws had a coffee maker with a built-in grinder. The grind function was default enabled, so if you went to brew some coffee from pre-ground beans and just turned it on, the grinder would kick on with an awful sound. The solution they came up with was a "Grinder Off" button that lit up to indicate the grinder was turned off. It was...confusing to say the least. And as an infrequent user of this coffee maker it was all too easy to screw up. To add insult to injury, that off light turned off (i.e. enabled grinding) every time you brewed a new pot. You had to be sure to press it every time you brewed from pre-ground beans, which was always for us.

CydeWeys 6y ago
To be honest, that setup would make more sense for me; I always brew from freshly ground whole beans. It sounds like they flat out bought the wrong coffee maker. They should have gotten one that doesn't come with an integrated grinder at all. That coffee maker is well designed for its intended happy path use case, which is not the same as you can say for this Oracle software.
- redshirtrob 6y ago
  No doubt it was the wrong coffee maker for them. I don't think it was well designed though. I think it was "eh, ok" designed for the happy path, and very poor for the unhappy (but probably pretty normal) path. I think what threw me is the "grinder off" button with a red light. The red light made sense in the context. But, if I were designing this, I would have a "grinder" button with a green light that was default "on", indicating that grinding was imminent. There was no green light on this part. It was red or off. That would have been consistent with the rest of the interface, where a green light on the "brew" dial meant the timer was set and a red light meant the coffee had brewed.
  - wging 6y ago
    In this situation, a physical toggle switch seems like a good idea. Its state is always inspectable and it stays the way you left it.
  - mediaman 6y ago
    Yeah, something like this would be much better off with a rocker switch with Grinder: ON, OFF. Then it saves state between runs and it's always clear if the grinder is on or off.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      That does seem like the ideal solution, but sadly a mechanical rocker switch would cost some number of pennies more to implement, hence they haven't. I have a hot water stand-by boiler in my kitchen a $15 outlet switch because the darn thing didn't come with a simple power button. Hardly anything these days does. All of which is to say, the ideal design often conflicts with the consumer's other expressed preference of "lowest price possible, it doesn't matter how many corners are cut and how quickly it dies".
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Except a case like this could so easily have memory, or even a physical toggle switch. So many things should be "preserved state" switches, but people put up with it. Not sure why.
anyfoo 6y ago
Ah, appliances with "non-physical" interfaces. My digital kitchen scale turns off pretty quickly after use. This is terrible, because it also doesn't remember tare (i.e. the weight of the empty container you put onto the scale prior to filling it), so when you turn it back on it zeroes on whatever's on the scale. Did not read the measurement immediately, or forgot the value? You now have to empty the content into another container and try again. Annoying if you're measuring uncooked rice. Infuriating if it's sticky, ultra-viscous fat. My dishwasher has a "COMPLETE" light that tells the household that a washing cycle finished after the door had last been closed, a signal that the contents of the dishwasher are likely clean (unless you leave the light on after emptying, but we rarely forget). But if you close the door accidentally just once after that, the light stays off, and there is absolutely no way to put it back on without a washing cycle. I read the manual, tried various logical and illogical key combinations, nothing. Now you have to tell your household "I didn't have time yet to put all the clean stuff out but the light is off, please remember that". My TV likes to switch automatically to its internal speakers for various reasons, which I never want to use because they are terrible in this particular TV, and switching back requires going through multiple laggy submenus. But worse, if I turn the TV on and notice it's on internal speakers again, I have to wait for it to finish booting completely before I'm allowed to navigate the laggy submenus. To leave this rant on a more positive note, though: The digital interfaces of my coffee maker, my microwave, and my water cooker (multiple temperatures, auto-reheat, auto-shutoff) seem to do exactly what they should, under many and sometimes non-trivial circumstances, so I'm glad good UX design still exists.
- matham 6y ago
  >Now you have to tell your household "I didn't have time yet to put all the clean stuff out but the light is off, please remember that". Search for "dishwasher magnet", which is made exactly for this.
  - anyfoo 6y ago
    Of course there's workarounds, and tons of ways to create your own signal. Would just be nice if the built in one didn't have this one flaw...
quickthrower2 6y ago
The MCAS of coffee grinders?
collinmanderson 6y ago
I used to have this exact coffee maker and always thought about how bad the UI was for grinding. My proposal would be to have a "Brew" button and a "Grind & Brew" button. On top of that you're also supposed to clean and dry the grinder parts after every use or it eventually gets clogged. I just switched to pre-ground coffee and a simpler coffee maker.

CydeWeys 6y ago

To be honest, that setup would make more sense for me; I always brew from freshly ground whole beans. It sounds like they flat out bought the wrong coffee maker. They should have gotten one that doesn't come with an integrated grinder at all. That coffee maker is well designed for its intended happy path use case, which is not the same as you can say for this Oracle software.

redshirtrob 6y ago
No doubt it was the wrong coffee maker for them. I don't think it was well designed though. I think it was "eh, ok" designed for the happy path, and very poor for the unhappy (but probably pretty normal) path. I think what threw me is the "grinder off" button with a red light. The red light made sense in the context. But, if I were designing this, I would have a "grinder" button with a green light that was default "on", indicating that grinding was imminent. There was no green light on this part. It was red or off. That would have been consistent with the rest of the interface, where a green light on the "brew" dial meant the timer was set and a red light meant the coffee had brewed.
- wging 6y ago
  In this situation, a physical toggle switch seems like a good idea. Its state is always inspectable and it stays the way you left it.
- mediaman 6y ago
  Yeah, something like this would be much better off with a rocker switch with Grinder: ON, OFF. Then it saves state between runs and it's always clear if the grinder is on or off.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    That does seem like the ideal solution, but sadly a mechanical rocker switch would cost some number of pennies more to implement, hence they haven't. I have a hot water stand-by boiler in my kitchen a $15 outlet switch because the darn thing didn't come with a simple power button. Hardly anything these days does. All of which is to say, the ideal design often conflicts with the consumer's other expressed preference of "lowest price possible, it doesn't matter how many corners are cut and how quickly it dies".
bbarnett 6y ago
Except a case like this could so easily have memory, or even a physical toggle switch. So many things should be "preserved state" switches, but people put up with it. Not sure why.

anyfoo 6y ago

Ah, appliances with "non-physical" interfaces. My digital kitchen scale turns off pretty quickly after use. This is terrible, because it also doesn't remember tare (i.e. the weight of the empty container you put onto the scale prior to filling it), so when you turn it back on it zeroes on whatever's on the scale. Did not read the measurement immediately, or forgot the value? You now have to empty the content into another container and try again. Annoying if you're measuring uncooked rice. Infuriating if it's sticky, ultra-viscous fat. My dishwasher has a "COMPLETE" light that tells the household that a washing cycle finished after the door had last been closed, a signal that the contents of the dishwasher are likely clean (unless you leave the light on after emptying, but we rarely forget). But if you close the door accidentally just once after that, the light stays off, and there is absolutely no way to put it back on without a washing cycle. I read the manual, tried various logical and illogical key combinations, nothing. Now you have to tell your household "I didn't have time yet to put all the clean stuff out but the light is off, please remember that". My TV likes to switch automatically to its internal speakers for various reasons, which I never want to use because they are terrible in this particular TV, and switching back requires going through multiple laggy submenus. But worse, if I turn the TV on and notice it's on internal speakers again, I have to wait for it to finish booting completely before I'm allowed to navigate the laggy submenus. To leave this rant on a more positive note, though: The digital interfaces of my coffee maker, my microwave, and my water cooker (multiple temperatures, auto-reheat, auto-shutoff) seem to do exactly what they should, under many and sometimes non-trivial circumstances, so I'm glad good UX design still exists.

matham 6y ago
>Now you have to tell your household "I didn't have time yet to put all the clean stuff out but the light is off, please remember that". Search for "dishwasher magnet", which is made exactly for this.
- anyfoo 6y ago
  Of course there's workarounds, and tons of ways to create your own signal. Would just be nice if the built in one didn't have this one flaw...

quickthrower2 6y ago

The MCAS of coffee grinders?

collinmanderson 6y ago

I used to have this exact coffee maker and always thought about how bad the UI was for grinding. My proposal would be to have a "Brew" button and a "Grind & Brew" button. On top of that you're also supposed to clean and dry the grinder parts after every use or it eventually gets clogged. I just switched to pre-ground coffee and a simpler coffee maker.