dan@danixd.com
+44 7837 501 537
My name is Dan O’Connell. I am an Interaction Design graduate and web enthusiast who loves designing immersive, creative & user-friendly interactions.
I hope to one day conquer the world with an Arduino board, a windmill and a modem, but in the mean time, I’ll stick to front end web design + development.
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Outdated Bathroom Interfaces
I just had a bath. I ran it too cold. Whilst enduring one of my more unpleasant bathing experiences, I realised just how outdated the interfaces in a bathroom are.
Running a bath should be pretty simple right? Well it is if you take stone cold baths, or are intolerant to heat, but trying to get that perfect temperature involves a lot of trial and error. Toe in, toe out, jump in, jump out.
Why not have new baths fitted with thermometers, so the user can set an optimum temperate for the bath to run at? It seems crazy that this doesn’t exists in baths, when it does in showers, jacuzzis etc.
The benefits would be huge;
Saves time – The user does not have stand by the bath employing the ‘dip technique’.
Environmentally friendly – Running the bath too hot/cold means you are forced to put more water in that you originally intended. This saves on water and the energy used to heat it.
Safer- With small children, monitoring the water temperature is critical.
Now the toilet. Again a super simple interaction, but it could be improved to make it more environmentally friendly. Why not have two buttons, one for a number one, another for a number two? Far less water is needed to eliminate the spoils of a number one. Maybe even have a third button, integrated with febreeze, for an emergency curry aftermath?
My final gripe on bathroom interfaces is the shower. There are a huge variety of shower UIs, but none of them seem to account for the fact you need to be standing underneath the shower head to turn them on! Why not have a switch, combined with a temperate gauge, accessible outside the shower, so you know when it is safe to enter the shower.