Steamd

The other day I went into a public restroom and was confounded by the placement of the hands-free sensor for the faucet. My thought was,”If the spout itself is so high up, why did they put the sensor so low?” To amplify the problem the sensor didn’t work the first time. I literally had to wave my hand in front of it like three times to get it to work.

The solution to this problem is simple: give me an alternative other than the faulty sensor. A traditional way of turning on a faucet would have been much faster.
I’ve seem other similar devices with similar problems: towel dispensers that spit out towels by just walking by it, toilets where the manual flush button isn’t obvious, and hand dryers that don’t turn on or stay on when you place your hands underneath them.

Good product design starts by recognizing that user experience is important. The problems that exist with these hands-free products tells me that the designers didn’t fully realize the problems they had to solve or that changes were introduced midstream that effected the products ability to do its job. As such the products ended up having defects that stunted the user experience, something that could have been easily solved with testing early on in the development phase.

Good product design is about communication and solving problems. Think about that the next time you go to a public restroom and a hands-free device fails to work properly. Ask yourself what you would change about it that would make it better. Do you think the rest of the public would get it and agree with that change? If so then that’s a good place to start.