Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Stupid product design - Microwaves

In our kitchen the microwave is located under the bench top, perfectly situated at Emily height. Upon trying to use said microwave I discovered the screen showing "child". Was this some warning from the mighty powers within the machine that it was watching us? Was it going to say Adult next, did it know my name? Is this the start of the machines taking over?

Fortunately, it turns out that the microwave was only locked in child proof mode, but how did this happen. Asking all in the house that had a grasp on the English language (ie everyone except the 11 month old) whether they had set the child lock, resulted in negative replies all round.

So who had done this? Little Emily scoots over to check out what daddy is looking at and starts pushing buttons, interestingly the same button repeatedly.

Out comes the owners manual to find out how to set, and more importantly unset the child lock. To set, press the "Start" button three times, to unset, press the "stop" button threes times. Rocket science!

I don't know what the product designers were thinking when that they came up with that inspired keystroke sequence, but it is perfectly clear that they do not have a single child between them. If I have learned one thing in my short time parenting, it is that a child (particularly ours) will press the same button over and over when said button emits a satisfying beep when pressed.

Hopefully she doesn't learn the unset sequence, but I'm not confident in that one.

1 comment:

Samuel said...

haha, i guess they were hoping the "start" noise was much more enjoyable than the "stop".