Snuggie

On cold days, I will occasionally wear my roommate's Snuggie, the amusing wearable blanket from commercials.

The Snuggie is basically intended to provide the warmth of a blanket without restricting your ability to perform activities that come with normal blanket usage.

It's basically a robe you wear backwards. Unlike a robe, however, there is nothing to tie around your waist to keep it on. The solution is that the top of the Snuggie is large and rectangular. This way, it basically hangs over your shoulders and the weight and friction of the fabric on your shoulders and back keep the Snuggie from sliding off.

So, since the Snuggie is a hybrid of the blanket and the robe, how does it compare to its predecessors?

The Snuggie works best when reclining, as it does indeed offer warmth and mobility. The fleece material, along with the bunched up fabric under the neck, give it the cozy feeling that a robe can't offer. When walking around, however, the Snuggie provides no warmth for the back, and may fall off. As a result, the Snuggie isn't always the best choice, but when lounging on the couch watching TV, the Snuggie performs remarkably well.

Clock Radio

For many years, my trusty Sony Dream Machine Clock Radio ICF-C122 has served me well. In this post I will extoll its many virtues, and some of its vices too.

The first thing  I love about my alarm clock is its appearance. It is basically a white cube with rounded corners and a glossy black face. The result is a sleek appearance, with controls concealed on the top and side, and a clean, readable face.

Now the controls. Pictured is the top of my clock radio:

At the top of the picture is a little slide. It is obvious just from looking that it is meant to be slid, and the little labels make it clear what the different positions do. These positions, from left to right, are Off, Radio, Radio Alarm, and Buzzer Alarm. When the slider is on one of the alarms, a red color underneath is exposed, giving a strong visual indicator that the alarm is set. What I like best, though, is that the only two positions I use, Off and Buzzer Alarm, are at the extremes, allowing me to slide the thing all the way, no fine-manipulation required. Furthermore, turning off the alarm when it goes off requires the slider to be moved, which is nice because it prevents a simple slap from turning it off.

The series of circular buttons below are Clock, H(ours), M(inutes), Alarm, and Sleep. These are for changing the clock and alarm time. The user simply holds down the button corresponding to what they wish to change (holding the alarm button changes the display to the alarm time), then presses the hour and minute buttons to increase the hour or minute until the desired time is shown. The great thing about these buttons is that they are all identifiable by feel. Clock and M are convex, while Alarm and H are concave; Clock and Alarm have little raised dots, H and M don't. The result is that every button has a unique feel. The purpose of this is to let the user change the time in the dark, or without looking at the top of the clock.

There are a couple annoyances here.

1. Holding down the hour or minute button increases the number pretty slowly, so I usually press them rapid-fire instead. I have gotten pretty good at this.

2. There is no way to decrease the hours or minutes, so changing the alarm from 9:00 AM to 8:00 AM requires many button presses. Not 23, though- only 9. This is because if you hold down the alarm or clock button and press both the hour and minutes buttons at the same time, the corresponding time is set to 12:00 AM. Without this feature, changing from 7:30 to 6:15 would require 68 button presses. With the feature, it requires 22. This cool feature makes this complaint pretty minor (though it took me many years to discover it).

Next to the four circular buttons is the Sleep button. I have no idea what it does. Hold it down, the screen shows 0:59. Press it, the radio comes on. I could guess what it's for, but I don't really know. In fairness, I never read the manual for this clock.

The large button at the bottom is the Snooze/Sleep Off. It does the typical snooze thing: hit it when the alarm goes off, and it will stop and go off 9 minutes later. I like this feature and use it a lot. This button also turns off the "sleep radio". I still don't know what this is all about. 

The side of the clock has the radio controls: an AM/FM switch, a knob for volume, and a knob for frequency (which is displayed on the front). I rarely use the radio, but from what I can tell I have no complaints here. There is one potential problem, though. Any Seinfeld fan knows the many problems that can go wrong with an alarm, one of which is that if the volume knob is all the way off, the radio alarm will be silent. I don't use the radio alarm, but this is a potential flaw.

My final complaint is that the buzzer alarm is, like, the sound from hell. It certainly does its job well, but its not exactly a soothing way to get up. This is not really a design flaw- just a part of my personal relationship with my Dream Machine.

Though not totally a design thing, the last thing I love about my radio is that it still works after many years of smashing, knocking off tables, and other abuse. He's a great little machine, and he and I look forward to many more years of partnership.

Post 3

I read the following article from the 2010 CHI conference:
 http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/cue/publications/harrisonskinputchi2010.pdf

It is entitled: Skinput: Appropriating the Body as an Input Surface. The article describes an input system for mobile devices that uses the skin as an input surface. The purported advantages of this system are that it is very compact/mobile, since the skin itself is always carried around anyway, and it allows for very intuitive use, since people have a natural spacial sense of their own body.

The system utilizes "bioacoustics". The user wears an armband on the upper arm containing an array of vibration sensors. When the user touches different parts of their arms, the sensors can detect, through vibrations in the skin and bones, where the user touched their fingers, hand, wrist, or arm. The researchers tested this input system by pairing it with projections on the arm in order to create keypads, scrolling menus, and other UI's.

I was surprised by the accuracy of the sensors in the system. The mobility, ease of use, and aesthetics of the Skinput system strike me as a natural next step in the progression of mobile technology.

Blog Entry 2

Due to my lack of camera, I have once again had to put my MS Paint skills to the test. Above, you will see a diagram of the microwave in my apartment. This microwave has many design flaws- I will describe a few.

The most obvious problem is with the basic microwave function. In order to cook/heat something, the user hits TIME, then the numbers, then START. The problem is that TIME could just as easily represent the clock display. The only way to tell that this is not the case is to notice the other button, CLOCK.

Furthermore, it is not clear that the TIME button serves any purpose. Pressing a number without first pressing TIME does nothing. Why not eliminate the TIME button, then? 

Another confusing function is the DEFROST. Pressing the button brings up the following display: dEF2. The user can only guess what to do next. Pressing START does nothing. The user, in fact, has to push numbers, entering a decibel number between 0.1 and 9.9, then pressing START. What do these numbers represent? Even worse, entering any number above 4.0 yields an error. Why is the user allowed to enter higher numbers than are acceptable? This is an altogether baffling function.

A final, most annoying design flaw is the beeping after cooking. When the time is up for cooking something, the microwave beeps five times. Opening the door does not interrupt the beeping, forcing the user to endure the series of shrill beeps to its conclusion. The user will learn to avoid this, so they will often open the door seconds before the cooking is over, thus leaving an annoying second or two on the timer, which must be later cleared before the next cooking.

Blog Entry 1

Of all the daily activities undertaken by the typical Union student, surely the one most afflicted with poor design is dining at West. In order to bring some of West's flaws to light, I will narrate a typical dining experience during the most popular meal, brunch.

The diner begins at the entrance at the top-right of the diagram. The initial options are on the diner's right, at the top of the diagram. To the right of the grill, pasta. There is the grill making omelettes, and to the left of the grill, a variety of breakfast foods, with oatmeal at the end. Suppose the diner wants pasta. They will wait in the line, which extends out into the hall. Why is it taking so long? Because the line for the pasta is the same as the line for the grill, which naturally is very slow, since people must wait for their omelettes. Thus the diner who simply wants pasta must wait for omelettes as well, even though she does not intend to get one. Frustrated with the wait, the diner decides to skip pasta and get some oatmeal. The diner must first squeeze through the entryway at the top-right of the diagram, since it is blocked by the line for omelettes, then navigate the small strait between the grill and the central island. After squeezing between the two lines for the aforementioned areas, our hapless diner must awkwardly wait by the oatmeal. Naturally, people who have waited through the entire line should have first priority in accessing food here. So the diner waits for an opening, then darts in and grabs what they want. This issue is common, and the result is that students are constantly lingering behind the line at the grill, generating chaos and congestion.

This anecdote has already become too long, so I will conclude by pointing to some general problems. Unlike Upper Dining, West is circular. Upper provides food in a reasonable order, providing a linear path for diners as well as ample space for the indecisive and second-helping-getters to reinsert themselves into the path where they so desire. West, however, being a circle, forces diners to constantly backtrack. For example, a diner may want pasta from the grill, a drink from the drink station, and a sandwich from the sandwich line. The diner must wait in line for the pasta, then squeeze through to the drinks, then navigate around the central island, inevitably going against the flow of traffic, to get to the sandwiches. This might be tolerable if there was more room, but unfortunately the narrow conduits only amplify the congestion generated by West's disorganization. Dining Services has made repeated attempts to ameliorate these problems, but in this blogger's opinion they have not succeeded.