7 ms·

Can we talk about rice cooker UX for a second? I own a mid-level Zojirushi and it makes fine rice. No better or worse than the cheap Target rice cooker I had b

Can we talk about rice cooker UX for a second? I own a mid-level Zojirushi and it makes fine rice. No better or worse than the cheap Target rice cooker I had before, or the slightly less cheap Ninja pressure cooker that also made rice. Definitely better than stovetop, worse than good Asian restaurants. But the Zojirushi stands out to me in terms of how user-unfriendly it is to a westerner... First, it comes with its own rice measuring cups, because a Zojirushi cup isn't the same as an imperial cup. Which is kinda strange to begin with, because isn't it just a ratio of rice to water? But there's not just one mismatched measuring cup, there's two. One is green and one is white, and the green one is for rice that isn't pre-washed, but that isn't labeled in English anywhere. And what is rice washing anyway? Then there's the control panel UI. You have to choose between white rice, brown rice (that's fine), and also GABA rice and quick rice. What the heck is GABA and why would I want slow rice if there's a quick rice? And what if I want quick brown rice? It's not possible. Once you hit start, no timer is present. You have no idea how long it's going to take (turns out, about an hour). How is it that this brand, with its special measuring cups and precise water lines, can't tell me how long it's going to take, but the ninja multi function pressure cooker could tell me down to the second as soon as I hit start? As much as I appreciate good rice, using this appliance is such a cognitive burden that I keep wanting to replace it. I still use this thing every week, but it annoys me every time. I constantly think about selling it and getting a simpler Western model instead just because it's so complex and overengineered. I'd much rather suffer a 10% degradation in output quality if that means the controls could be simplified to just white/brown & start, with a built-in timer. Does something like that exist? Why does Zojirushi make it so complicated? Do the Japanese prefer having more options to tweak? (Reminds me of my old Casio watches). Is this a broader cultural preference, or just something special about this one brand?

lukevp 3y ago
Not defending the UX, it’s trash. But it starts showing you a timer when it’s more certain (usually around the 6-8 minute mark). I switched from a zojirushi to a Tiger from Costco, and it cooks the rice in half the time, but it has the exact same issues since it’s Japanese (separate measurement cups, no timer until it’s almost done) and the seals collect a lot more water than the zojirushi did. The rice comes out better and quicker though. I do think my zojirushi was broken because the rice kept getting worse and worse before I replaced it.
jhbadger 3y ago
>And what is rice washing anyway? There's an argument that you should wash your rice before you cook it to remove contaminants, particularly arsenic, which is a common soil contaminant.
- accrual 3y ago
  It also removes starches from the rice, which can result in a cleaner/less sticky pot of rice where the individual grains are better defined.
- FrankoDelMar 3y ago
  I would avoid any rice grown in the United States if you’re concerned about arsenic levels. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/
  - solardev 3y ago
    Seems like organic rice grown in California is actually lower than the average levels in many other countries? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Arsenic-levels-mg-kg-in-raw-rice-from-different-countries_tbl1_236848478 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Arsenic-levels-mg-kg-in-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521400032X#:~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20the%20American%20rice,0.097%20mg%20kg%E2%88%921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521...).
- russdill 3y ago
  I don't think simply washing rice appreciably reduces arsenic levels. It's just to get rude rid of the loose rice flour that grinds off during shipping/handling
mindslight 3y ago
Maybe it's your model? My Zojirushi came with a single clear measuring cup (which is actually just 6 US fluid ounces), the instruction manual gives a quick explanation of the various modes such that I don't find their presence burdensome, and the displays an estimated time right away (which is nice as some of the cooking modes take wildly longer). I'd never cooked much rice at home because I never got good results when I tried with the stove, and this turned it into a solved problem. I'm sure a $20 model could have gotten me 80% of the utility, but gestures vaguely at overwhelming consumer abundance. (edit: reading another comment, turns out that plastic cup is one gou which is 6.10 fl. oz)
- solardev 3y ago
  Maybe! I'd much rather have the simpler model, but their website wasn't very clear about what has what either, especially in terms of UX.
dmoy 3y ago
Alternatively, as we do in our (mostly) Chinese household: Put rice in rice cooker. Rinse the rice and pour out water until it isn't cloudy. Add water to the depth of one thumb digit. Hit cook button, then ignore it. Brown rice, white rice, whatever, all the same. I'd have to check if we're still using a zojirushi or tiger, or are using a Korean cuckoo now. > How is it that this brand, with its special measuring cups and precise water lines, can't tell me how long it's going to take, but the ninja multi function pressure cooker could tell me down to the second as soon as I hit start? Well that one, cus they know people will just eyeball a thumb digit of water. So it won't know until it gets closer to done.
- solardev 3y ago
  That's the kind of simple rice cooker I had growing up, too, and my parents used similar methods of estimation. It turned out fine and was much, much easier to use. I remember the first time we got a Zojirushi hot water dispenser, and even then it was like "Wait, you have to push these tiny buttons in what order again?" Whereas the previous cheap one we had a giant, easy to use button front and center. Maybe it really is a cultural difference...?
  - dmoy 3y ago
    To be clear, we don't have a simple rice cooker. We have one of these terrible UX rice cookers with a shit ton of buttons and settings. But we ignore all that and just do the thumb-level of water and hit the button that says cook (and also says like three other things too, but whatever). We ignore the other buttons.
makeitdouble 3y ago
> Once you hit start, no timer is present. You have no idea how long it's going to take (turns out, about an hour). The rice cooker doesn't know either, it will take whatever is needed to take. Short of putting an extensive sensor array and ask you for the kind of rice you put in it, there's probably no way to actually predict it. On the quick/normal setting, they taste different. My best image would be on black tea: you can use 95C water or near 100C water, one is quicker than the other to fully extract the flavor, but won't result in the same profile (you might actually prefer the quicker one, your choice) On the UX...welcome to a world where you buy products of different cultures. If that helps, many people don't actually follow the dosing cup to the letter and adjust the amount of rice and water to their taste, relative the rice we're using at that time after a few tries (at least I do, and so does anyone I talked to), so there is no guideline that would help us. I'd perhaps compare it to coffee, there are machines doing it all automatically but they taste bland, and the better tools will expect you to know what you're getting into. Rice cookers are as serious business in Japan as espresso machine in Italy, you won't get a high end machine that catters to people who're not familiar with what's going on.
- solardev 3y ago
  Hmm, thanks for explaining the profiles. I'll try a few and see how they taste. > The rice cooker doesn't know either, it will take whatever is needed to take. Short of putting an extensive sensor array and ask you for the kind of rice you put in it, there's probably no way to actually predict it. Why doesn't it know when it's so consistent every time? How does the ninja know? How does this one know when it's closer to 10 minutes? Seems like you should be able to estimate it down to a within a few minutes at start, then refine that estimate if need be. It's helpful to know whether something will take 15, 20 min or 45 to an hour.
  - kelipso 3y ago
    Different rice varieties have very different cooking times, also ratio or rice to water also influences the time, so the machine can't just estimate based on weight.
faitswulff 3y ago
Zojirushi rice cups are a standard. It’s just not a western standard: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/33033 https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/33033
- solardev 3y ago
  I'm sure it is, but why didn't they localize it alongside the English buttons? At least print it in English on the cup, if not outright tweaking the corresponding water lines in the cook pan and the cooking logic to a more common measurement here.
SECProto 3y ago
I think most of your points have been addressed, but this one.. > a Zojirushi cup isn't the same as an imperial cup Indeed, a zojirushi cup is 180ml, while an imperial cup is 284ml. Perhaps you meant a US Customary cup, at either 237ml or 240ml? Then there's a whole mess of other measurements people call a "cup" (118ml, 227ml, 250ml...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29
- throw0101b 3y ago
  A bit of history: > The gō or cup is a traditional Japanese unit based on the ge which is equal to 10 shaku or 1⁄10 shō. Back in the year 1891 it was officially equated with 2401/13310 liters. The gō is the traditional amount used for a serving of rice and a cup of sake in Japanese cuisine. Although the gō is no longer used as an official unit, 1-gō measuring cups or their 180ml metric equivalents are often included with modern premium rice cookers. * https://greedy-panda.com/2020/06/the-rice-measuring-cup-explained/ https://greedy-panda.com/2020/06/the-rice-measuring-cup-expl... > Measuring rice correctly is the key to make delicious rice. For rice measurement, we use a traditional Japanese measure called go or rice cup. A level cup of this measuring cup is 1 rice cup. 1 rice cup equals approximately ¾ US cup or 180 ml. * https://toirokitchen.com/products/rice-measuring-cup https://toirokitchen.com/products/rice-measuring-cup
- solardev 3y ago
  I had no idea this was the case! Yeesh, that's even worse than I imagined.
  - SECProto 3y ago
    Non metric units are a nightmare! I find them terribly interesting, but if you're looking for an unambiguous unit of measure, the metric system is the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint#Other_pints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint#Other_pints
    - 3y ago
veidr 3y ago
> a Zojirushi cup isn't the same as an imperial cup Right, but a US cup isn't the same as a Japanese cup, or a UK cup, or even a US "legal cup" etc.. unfortunately the "cup" isn't a useful unit of measurement any more than a non-XKCD-1179[1] date is a useful expression of a date (T_T) > why would I want slow rice if there's a quick rice? Slow rice is better. > isn't it just a ratio of rice to water? Yes (and therefore, indeed, WTF (!!!(?!))) > what if I want quick brown rice? It's not possible. There are levels to this game. > You have no idea how long it's going to take Indeed. Nobody does. > As much as I appreciate good rice Do you, though? > I'd much rather suffer a 10% degradatio... if... controls could be simplified...Does something like that exist? Yes (but not in/from Japan) > Do the Japanese prefer having more options to tweak? Yes > Is this a broader cultural preference, or just something special about this one brand? The former; every Japanese rice cooker (and website) is like this, only more so[2] [1]: https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/ [2]: seems like an infinitely recursive statement, since "every Japanese rice cooker" includes the Zojirushi rice cookers under discussion; however, infinite recursion is actually an explicitly-supported feature of TRON (OS, but that's the O in TRON), which powers almost all Japanese rice cookers[3] [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project
eldaisfish 3y ago
many of your "complaints" seem easily solvable. Rice washing is a fairly common practice in cultures that cook rice. You are likely from a culture where rice is not common so the solution is to look it up. My ten year old zojirushi rice cooker came with instructions telling you how to wash rice. A "cup" is a horrible measure of volume because there are so many definitions. This is clearly not zojirushi's fault. If you don't know what GABA rice is, may i suggest you look it up? Seriously, if you do not understand what something is, look it up instead of dismissing it as "unfriendly to a westerner".
- solardev 3y ago
  I think this sort of condescending attitude is what makes products hard to use. I did in fact look all of this up, but that doesn't make the rice maker easy to use. (Edit) Believe it or not, yes, I can RTFM too (and did -- it still wasn't very clear, and neither were the online videos). But that's not really the point. I was more curious about why a company that clearly values the design behind its products would make these design tradeoffs. Is it the result of careful user research? Japanese cultural traditions? Thoughtlessness (unlikely?). Etc. I find Japanese automobile dashboards easier to use than most American ones, for example. Japanese watches hellish to use. Sony anything pretty complicated. Is it a model/product/company/cultural/other factor? IMO the more interesting question here isn't "How to teach HN dumbass to use a rice cooker" but "Why does this famous Japanese rice cooker company design its interface this particular way?"
  - fomine3 3y ago
    This is the most accurate explanation about current Japanese design I've ever seen. https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-lies-myths-and-secrets-of-japanese-ui-design/ https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-lies-myths-and-secrets-o... favorite quote: > So, one thing we learned about Japanese users is that people feel insecure of empty space and people feel insecure if they don’t see everything up front.
  - eldaisfish 3y ago
    you are now moving the goalposts. Understanding how to cook rice is a very different thing from a sony TV remote being complicated. Meanwhile, a sony playstation joystick is among the easiest designs to use. I disagree that my reply was condescending.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tantalor 3y ago
> turns out, about an hour Um what? That's absurd. Cooking rice should take like 15-25 minutes, 35 minutes tops.
- artimaeis 3y ago
  There's more than one way to cook rice. A lot of the Japanese rice cookers cook it a bit lower/slower than you'd normally do on a stovetop in a pot. The result is usually rice with nicer texture and flavor, but if you're only ever buying the cheapest rice, or value the speed it can be cooked, it's probably not worthwhile. Just stick to the really cheap rice cookers that usually take around 20 mins. Here's a screenshot from the Zojirushi Fuzzy's manual, it generally takes around an hour to cook any rice. https://imgur.com/a/pyA6l27 https://imgur.com/a/pyA6l27
ethbr1 3y ago
> Reminds me of my old Casio watches If you ever want a UX example, go out and buy the following: https://www.amazon.com/Casio-Classic-Core-DW9052-1-Wristwatch/dp/B000GAYQLI/ https://www.amazon.com/Casio-Classic-Core-DW9052-1-Wristwatc... https://www.amazon.com/Timex-T5E901-Ironman-Classic-Black/dp/B000AYTYLW/ https://www.amazon.com/Timex-T5E901-Ironman-Classic-Black/dp... NO NOT THROW AWAY THE CASIO MANUAL Begin using the G-Shock first, making sure to learn how to do common watch tasks. Use chronometer, change time, set timers/alarms, etc. Then, after doing that for awhile, trying using the Ironman. Just for kicks, don't read the manual. Attempt the same common tasks. It's mind-boggling how esoterically-unnecessary Casio UX is.
- Someone 3y ago
  That first link mention this feature: “Auto-calendar out until the year 2099, the watch does not have to be adjusted for the number days in month even leap year until 2099” Amazing! (That they dare list that as a feature, not that it seems to have a bug for 2100, which won’t be a leap year)
maxglute 3y ago
Japan stuck in their ways. 150$ Xiaomi smart rice cooker that was comparable to highend Zojirushi had very friendly UI. You can get basics done fine with small on board oled, but a lot of it is behind smarthome app and appliance is soft region locked. An offline high performance rice cooker with good onboard UI... probably one of the Korean brands like Cuckoo but I've never used. SKR knows how to do decent hardware and software though.
- solardev 3y ago
  Cool, thanks for the suggestions! The Xiaomi one looks beautiful and simple. I'll have to look for one next time I'm overseas. The Cuckoo ones still look really complex, though. Was there a particular model with simpler UI?

lukevp 3y ago

Not defending the UX, it’s trash. But it starts showing you a timer when it’s more certain (usually around the 6-8 minute mark). I switched from a zojirushi to a Tiger from Costco, and it cooks the rice in half the time, but it has the exact same issues since it’s Japanese (separate measurement cups, no timer until it’s almost done) and the seals collect a lot more water than the zojirushi did. The rice comes out better and quicker though. I do think my zojirushi was broken because the rice kept getting worse and worse before I replaced it.

jhbadger 3y ago

>And what is rice washing anyway? There's an argument that you should wash your rice before you cook it to remove contaminants, particularly arsenic, which is a common soil contaminant.

accrual 3y ago
It also removes starches from the rice, which can result in a cleaner/less sticky pot of rice where the individual grains are better defined.
FrankoDelMar 3y ago
I would avoid any rice grown in the United States if you’re concerned about arsenic levels. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1892142/
- solardev 3y ago
  Seems like organic rice grown in California is actually lower than the average levels in many other countries? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Arsenic-levels-mg-kg-in-raw-rice-from-different-countries_tbl1_236848478 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Arsenic-levels-mg-kg-in-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521400032X#:~:text=In%20comparison%2C%20the%20American%20rice,0.097%20mg%20kg%E2%88%921 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187853521...).
russdill 3y ago
I don't think simply washing rice appreciably reduces arsenic levels. It's just to get rude rid of the loose rice flour that grinds off during shipping/handling

mindslight 3y ago

Maybe it's your model? My Zojirushi came with a single clear measuring cup (which is actually just 6 US fluid ounces), the instruction manual gives a quick explanation of the various modes such that I don't find their presence burdensome, and the displays an estimated time right away (which is nice as some of the cooking modes take wildly longer). I'd never cooked much rice at home because I never got good results when I tried with the stove, and this turned it into a solved problem. I'm sure a $20 model could have gotten me 80% of the utility, but gestures vaguely at overwhelming consumer abundance. (edit: reading another comment, turns out that plastic cup is one gou which is 6.10 fl. oz)

solardev 3y ago
Maybe! I'd much rather have the simpler model, but their website wasn't very clear about what has what either, especially in terms of UX.

dmoy 3y ago

Alternatively, as we do in our (mostly) Chinese household: Put rice in rice cooker. Rinse the rice and pour out water until it isn't cloudy. Add water to the depth of one thumb digit. Hit cook button, then ignore it. Brown rice, white rice, whatever, all the same. I'd have to check if we're still using a zojirushi or tiger, or are using a Korean cuckoo now. > How is it that this brand, with its special measuring cups and precise water lines, can't tell me how long it's going to take, but the ninja multi function pressure cooker could tell me down to the second as soon as I hit start? Well that one, cus they know people will just eyeball a thumb digit of water. So it won't know until it gets closer to done.

solardev 3y ago
That's the kind of simple rice cooker I had growing up, too, and my parents used similar methods of estimation. It turned out fine and was much, much easier to use. I remember the first time we got a Zojirushi hot water dispenser, and even then it was like "Wait, you have to push these tiny buttons in what order again?" Whereas the previous cheap one we had a giant, easy to use button front and center. Maybe it really is a cultural difference...?
- dmoy 3y ago
  To be clear, we don't have a simple rice cooker. We have one of these terrible UX rice cookers with a shit ton of buttons and settings. But we ignore all that and just do the thumb-level of water and hit the button that says cook (and also says like three other things too, but whatever). We ignore the other buttons.

makeitdouble 3y ago

> Once you hit start, no timer is present. You have no idea how long it's going to take (turns out, about an hour). The rice cooker doesn't know either, it will take whatever is needed to take. Short of putting an extensive sensor array and ask you for the kind of rice you put in it, there's probably no way to actually predict it. On the quick/normal setting, they taste different. My best image would be on black tea: you can use 95C water or near 100C water, one is quicker than the other to fully extract the flavor, but won't result in the same profile (you might actually prefer the quicker one, your choice) On the UX...welcome to a world where you buy products of different cultures. If that helps, many people don't actually follow the dosing cup to the letter and adjust the amount of rice and water to their taste, relative the rice we're using at that time after a few tries (at least I do, and so does anyone I talked to), so there is no guideline that would help us. I'd perhaps compare it to coffee, there are machines doing it all automatically but they taste bland, and the better tools will expect you to know what you're getting into. Rice cookers are as serious business in Japan as espresso machine in Italy, you won't get a high end machine that catters to people who're not familiar with what's going on.

solardev 3y ago
Hmm, thanks for explaining the profiles. I'll try a few and see how they taste. > The rice cooker doesn't know either, it will take whatever is needed to take. Short of putting an extensive sensor array and ask you for the kind of rice you put in it, there's probably no way to actually predict it. Why doesn't it know when it's so consistent every time? How does the ninja know? How does this one know when it's closer to 10 minutes? Seems like you should be able to estimate it down to a within a few minutes at start, then refine that estimate if need be. It's helpful to know whether something will take 15, 20 min or 45 to an hour.
- kelipso 3y ago
  Different rice varieties have very different cooking times, also ratio or rice to water also influences the time, so the machine can't just estimate based on weight.

faitswulff 3y ago

Zojirushi rice cups are a standard. It’s just not a western standard: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/33033 https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/33033

solardev 3y ago
I'm sure it is, but why didn't they localize it alongside the English buttons? At least print it in English on the cup, if not outright tweaking the corresponding water lines in the cook pan and the cooking logic to a more common measurement here.

SECProto 3y ago

I think most of your points have been addressed, but this one.. > a Zojirushi cup isn't the same as an imperial cup Indeed, a zojirushi cup is 180ml, while an imperial cup is 284ml. Perhaps you meant a US Customary cup, at either 237ml or 240ml? Then there's a whole mess of other measurements people call a "cup" (118ml, 227ml, 250ml...) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cup_%28unit%29

throw0101b 3y ago
A bit of history: > The gō or cup is a traditional Japanese unit based on the ge which is equal to 10 shaku or 1⁄10 shō. Back in the year 1891 it was officially equated with 2401/13310 liters. The gō is the traditional amount used for a serving of rice and a cup of sake in Japanese cuisine. Although the gō is no longer used as an official unit, 1-gō measuring cups or their 180ml metric equivalents are often included with modern premium rice cookers. * https://greedy-panda.com/2020/06/the-rice-measuring-cup-explained/ https://greedy-panda.com/2020/06/the-rice-measuring-cup-expl... > Measuring rice correctly is the key to make delicious rice. For rice measurement, we use a traditional Japanese measure called go or rice cup. A level cup of this measuring cup is 1 rice cup. 1 rice cup equals approximately ¾ US cup or 180 ml. * https://toirokitchen.com/products/rice-measuring-cup https://toirokitchen.com/products/rice-measuring-cup
solardev 3y ago
I had no idea this was the case! Yeesh, that's even worse than I imagined.
- SECProto 3y ago
  Non metric units are a nightmare! I find them terribly interesting, but if you're looking for an unambiguous unit of measure, the metric system is the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Comparison_table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint#Other_pints https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint#Other_pints
  - 3y ago

veidr 3y ago

> a Zojirushi cup isn't the same as an imperial cup Right, but a US cup isn't the same as a Japanese cup, or a UK cup, or even a US "legal cup" etc.. unfortunately the "cup" isn't a useful unit of measurement any more than a non-XKCD-1179[1] date is a useful expression of a date (T_T) > why would I want slow rice if there's a quick rice? Slow rice is better. > isn't it just a ratio of rice to water? Yes (and therefore, indeed, WTF (!!!(?!))) > what if I want quick brown rice? It's not possible. There are levels to this game. > You have no idea how long it's going to take Indeed. Nobody does. > As much as I appreciate good rice Do you, though? > I'd much rather suffer a 10% degradatio... if... controls could be simplified...Does something like that exist? Yes (but not in/from Japan) > Do the Japanese prefer having more options to tweak? Yes > Is this a broader cultural preference, or just something special about this one brand? The former; every Japanese rice cooker (and website) is like this, only more so[2] [1]: https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/ [2]: seems like an infinitely recursive statement, since "every Japanese rice cooker" includes the Zojirushi rice cookers under discussion; however, infinite recursion is actually an explicitly-supported feature of TRON (OS, but that's the O in TRON), which powers almost all Japanese rice cookers[3] [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project

eldaisfish 3y ago

many of your "complaints" seem easily solvable. Rice washing is a fairly common practice in cultures that cook rice. You are likely from a culture where rice is not common so the solution is to look it up. My ten year old zojirushi rice cooker came with instructions telling you how to wash rice. A "cup" is a horrible measure of volume because there are so many definitions. This is clearly not zojirushi's fault. If you don't know what GABA rice is, may i suggest you look it up? Seriously, if you do not understand what something is, look it up instead of dismissing it as "unfriendly to a westerner".

solardev 3y ago
I think this sort of condescending attitude is what makes products hard to use. I did in fact look all of this up, but that doesn't make the rice maker easy to use. (Edit) Believe it or not, yes, I can RTFM too (and did -- it still wasn't very clear, and neither were the online videos). But that's not really the point. I was more curious about why a company that clearly values the design behind its products would make these design tradeoffs. Is it the result of careful user research? Japanese cultural traditions? Thoughtlessness (unlikely?). Etc. I find Japanese automobile dashboards easier to use than most American ones, for example. Japanese watches hellish to use. Sony anything pretty complicated. Is it a model/product/company/cultural/other factor? IMO the more interesting question here isn't "How to teach HN dumbass to use a rice cooker" but "Why does this famous Japanese rice cooker company design its interface this particular way?"
- fomine3 3y ago
  This is the most accurate explanation about current Japanese design I've ever seen. https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-lies-myths-and-secrets-of-japanese-ui-design/ https://www.disruptingjapan.com/the-lies-myths-and-secrets-o... favorite quote: > So, one thing we learned about Japanese users is that people feel insecure of empty space and people feel insecure if they don’t see everything up front.
- eldaisfish 3y ago
  you are now moving the goalposts. Understanding how to cook rice is a very different thing from a sony TV remote being complicated. Meanwhile, a sony playstation joystick is among the easiest designs to use. I disagree that my reply was condescending.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tantalor 3y ago

> turns out, about an hour Um what? That's absurd. Cooking rice should take like 15-25 minutes, 35 minutes tops.

artimaeis 3y ago
There's more than one way to cook rice. A lot of the Japanese rice cookers cook it a bit lower/slower than you'd normally do on a stovetop in a pot. The result is usually rice with nicer texture and flavor, but if you're only ever buying the cheapest rice, or value the speed it can be cooked, it's probably not worthwhile. Just stick to the really cheap rice cookers that usually take around 20 mins. Here's a screenshot from the Zojirushi Fuzzy's manual, it generally takes around an hour to cook any rice. https://imgur.com/a/pyA6l27 https://imgur.com/a/pyA6l27

ethbr1 3y ago

> Reminds me of my old Casio watches If you ever want a UX example, go out and buy the following: https://www.amazon.com/Casio-Classic-Core-DW9052-1-Wristwatch/dp/B000GAYQLI/ https://www.amazon.com/Casio-Classic-Core-DW9052-1-Wristwatc... https://www.amazon.com/Timex-T5E901-Ironman-Classic-Black/dp/B000AYTYLW/ https://www.amazon.com/Timex-T5E901-Ironman-Classic-Black/dp... NO NOT THROW AWAY THE CASIO MANUAL Begin using the G-Shock first, making sure to learn how to do common watch tasks. Use chronometer, change time, set timers/alarms, etc. Then, after doing that for awhile, trying using the Ironman. Just for kicks, don't read the manual. Attempt the same common tasks. It's mind-boggling how esoterically-unnecessary Casio UX is.

Someone 3y ago
That first link mention this feature: “Auto-calendar out until the year 2099, the watch does not have to be adjusted for the number days in month even leap year until 2099” Amazing! (That they dare list that as a feature, not that it seems to have a bug for 2100, which won’t be a leap year)

maxglute 3y ago

Japan stuck in their ways. 150$ Xiaomi smart rice cooker that was comparable to highend Zojirushi had very friendly UI. You can get basics done fine with small on board oled, but a lot of it is behind smarthome app and appliance is soft region locked. An offline high performance rice cooker with good onboard UI... probably one of the Korean brands like Cuckoo but I've never used. SKR knows how to do decent hardware and software though.

solardev 3y ago
Cool, thanks for the suggestions! The Xiaomi one looks beautiful and simple. I'll have to look for one next time I'm overseas. The Cuckoo ones still look really complex, though. Was there a particular model with simpler UI?