Lousy keypad design for automatic curtains

Found in the This is Broken Flickr pool:

I am in Las Vegas for a conference this week. The hotel is really nice, but I encountered this bizarre keypad to work the curtains in the room. There is no natural mapping between the buttons and their functions. I went through quite a bit of trial & error before figuring it out. And the problem is that even once you figure it out, it's not very logical.

Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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macegr

Left to right orientation would probably confuse more people, since the curtains are moving vertically.

I’m in the camp that had no problem understanding the controls at first glance. Same with the Ikea infographic.

Maybe this is just a good illustration of the rift in our society in the way that people approach technology. The person who has trouble with the curtain control is the person who buys an iPod instead of the many cheaper and more advanced options.
Jeff

I think there might be some arrogance being displayed here. I find both this drape switch and the Ikea hours chart quite clear and obvious. Could it be that we don’t all think alike? Might it be more honest express one’s own failure to comprehend than grouse about “bad” design?
Anonymous

That layout looks familiar, are you staying at the Wynn? I remember thinking that the buttons were mislabled.
jeremedia

Macegr,

Your post is one of the simplest examples of what I term “Standard Idiot,” as every sentence in your post is factually and/or conceptually wrong.

Sentence #1: Likely Factually Wrong. The curtains in every hotel I have ever visited do in fact move horizontally, and certainly the type with both solid and sheer curtains move horizontally. The curtains in question were likely covering a very large window and thus making motorized controls desirable due to weight.

Sentence #2: Absolutely Conceptually Wrong. You claim to quickly perceive the meaning of poorly designed interfaces and information, and through that perception you claim fellowship with those who also claim they “get it”, as if seeing through bad design is an intelligence test, while in fact by stating that you don’t see the problem you do fail what test there is.

Sentence #3: Just Utterly Stupid. While equating an iPod purchase with dislike of poor design is reasonable, you no doubt are unable to make that connection. You simply do not understand what design is, what the goals of design are, and why those who do understand design are always flaming your stupid comments.

Read up!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design
Bluebottle

While I agree the interface could be presented better, it does make readily apparent sense to me even at first glance.

Sheer curtains controlled from the right column.
Solid curtains from the left.

The three buttons in each column are
Open, Stop, and Close.

Assuming I am correct, what’s hard about that?
Method-es

This was quite easy for me to understand… Are you serious this makes front page bb? I thought BB had standards….

Although not extremely intuitive, it’s not difficult to comprehend. 3 controls, 6 buttons, 2 types of curtains, Heck I don’t even need to see the panel to know how it’s going to work, maybe thats what caused it in the first place.
Doran

Yea, it could be better, but seems pretty straightforward. At least once you figure out what solid and sheer mean.
Rob Maguire

Could the panel been better designed? Yes. Could a person of average intelligence figure it out anyway? Certainly. Did this post really merit the attention BoingBoing will undoubtedly raise for it? Certainly not!
jeremedia

The basic problem here is that the buttons are curtain “playback” controls, and are oriented contrary to our experience with playback controls. We expect start/stop/reverse to be oriented left-to-right, not up-down.

The same controls, and lame labeling, oriented left-to-right would be immediately understandable to more people.
Mark Frauenfelder

“Are you serious this makes front page bb? I thought BB had standards.”

Method-es: Yes, I’m serious. I post a lot of things that are trivial. If something is surprising or interesting to me, I post it.
Anonymous

That’s the Wynn!

It made me think twice too.
mujadaddy

Define “logical,” as you use it here.
tehmoth

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@Jff: ys, t ds sm lk rrgnc r ‘lk t th stpd dsgnrs mk dmb dsgn, w r bttr thn thm.’
Mark Frauenfelder

“Define ‘logical,’ as you use it here.”

You’ll have to ask the fellow who stayed at the hotel and wrote “And the problem is that even once you figure it out, it’s not very logical.” Follow the link.
extra88

Looks like a job for Don Norman! Does he have a cape?

I think most commenters are being too forgiving to the . It’s not the worst design, you can look and think about it and figure it out, but the point is you shouldn’t have to. I’m not saying I have the answer but I am asserting that the answer exists.

I’ll take a stab at it anyway. Each curtain could have a rocker switch, push the top part to open, the bottom part to close, push nothing and it stops. Yes, this means you have to actually hold the switch but I think that would be expected. You could also make it so if you press it for 1 full second it’ll keep going on it’s own, as most driver car windows will do (going down, not up) but that in itself can be confusing because then the curtain is moving by itself.

Jermedia’s suggestion of changing the orientation and making them more like playback buttons is not bad but I still don’t see the need for an explicit “stop” button.
Anonymous

well you can tell who’s a white collar worker here :) the vertical open, close, and stop buttons appear like that on most utility garage doors, etc.
butiwasthere

not being able to actually see the curtains makes it hard to understand what the functions mean seeing as how i was thinking these controls were meant for blinds, but once i realized that those columns said “solid” and “sheer” (damn my bad eyesight) it began to make sense to me. i’m also quite used to the do it yourself pull cords so these new fangled electrical curtain operators can sometimes deeply confuse me.
dainel

Between this and the ikea graphic, I think perhaps Mark has been working too hard. Maybe he needs more sleep. :)
Mark Levitt

How abou tif the controls actually were a little miniature curtain and you simply grasped them and moved them to the position you wanted and the real curtains would follow suit.

Sort of like the electric seat adjustments on cars that look like a car seat.

But seriously, yes, Donald Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things” would have a lot to say about this one.