I get what the author is getting at, but I really think this is a poor comparison. Selecting a gear on a bike gives immediate feedback. Selecting a power level and cook time on a microwave...does not. Not needing to remember a formula for figuring out a cook time and power level based on the quantity of meat I'm defrosting is a really useful feature.<p>Plus, I can always select whatever levels I want manually on the microwave, and when using a pre-programmed function I can see what the microwave is doing.<p>I think an example that makes it clear that the author needs to more carefully work out their point is the Honeywell AllergenPlus line of airfilters. For a while, they had three settings, "Allergen", "General Clean" and "Germ" which are merely 3 fan speed settings. This method was so disjointed form reality, the eventually started shipping them with stickers covering it up with "Low", "Medium", and "High" (I forget what the actual order was...).<p>It's a real life nightmare bicycle, but of course there is no risk of losing intuitive understanding because of instant feedback. The user will quickly figure out which setting is low, which is medium, and which is high based on simply pressing the buttons. A similar thing will happen with the bicycle. People don't actually look at the numbers and select a number, they just shift gears until it "feels" right.<p>This really needs a better product example, perhaps just AI over search.
I question the degree to which even <i>numbered</i> gears matter on bicycles. I have two bicycles, none of them have numbered gears.<p>One has modern integrated brake-shifters with two separate parts that can be clicked inwards to shift up and down. There's no feedback on which gear it's on, but I know which part to click to make pedaling harder, and which part to click to make it lighter. At the stops, the shifter just won't move. The drawback is that if I want to know how close I am to the end of the range, I have to look down at the chainrings.<p>The other bike has un-indexed downtube shifters. These are tiny, frame-mounted levers that are moved smoothly (no clicks) forwards or back and they directly control the derailers which move the chain across gears. This is my favourite interaction pattern for bike gears, because you can put your hand down and feel the position of both levers and immediately know which gear combination you're in. Incredibly practical in heavier traffic to never need to take eyes off the road.
Interesting that the tech these days is going in the opposite direction. These trends to hide technical details (e.g. files on iPhone) can get really frustrating when it doesn't work. Almost a mockery.
I like to consult the table that explains what every program really does for any washing machines that I use :)<p>I want relatively short, more water than minimum, medium-gentle agitation, medium RPM spin dry. It has many names.
This reminds me of the Japanese principle of "fuben eki". Sometimes it makes sense to make a task more difficult in order to increase mastery or improve a person's understanding of how the process works.
The author is advocating for simpler single-purpose products I guess.<p>The microwave example just doesn't make sense when what you have isn't a single "just push the power button" machine, but a combined microwave/oven for instance. You'll want clear mode management, temperature management when defrosting meat, pre-heating and convection when cooking a whole chicken etc.<p>Anecdotally, a lot of people don't really understand/care about bicycle gears, and stick it to the heaviest and call it a day (on city bikes it's not that heavy, they can dance when it's tougher, and just get off and push the bike when it's really hard). We've seen the same cycle for cars, where people only caring about going from A to B will enjoy automatic transmissions better.<p>All in all, I agree single purpose products are great when you can afford one and it does the job. Paradoxically it also helps expand the use cases as the user comes to better understand how it works and how it can be "abused".
Tried to figure out what temperature my Ninja slow cooker cooks at. Not possible, only Hi and Lo. Internets say different models use different temperature.
I recently bought myself a mini "smart" rice cooker from Aliexpress. Works really well, but the buttons are just labelled in chinese as it's only meant to be sold in that market. Even the app needed to have its location changed so that it would pair with the device, but at least it let me keep "English". The app has a whole list of different rice varieties so that it presumably customises the process for different grains, but it's great as I choose either the quick or the slow cooking method and let it do it's thing.
design design design
how I love good design
how I love designing and building things
how I love dissasembling things, and fixing and modifying things, re purposing parts
how I love wrecking yards, with the worlds guts casualy spread out and on display, and making friends with the denisins thereof, some intricate
shiny thing bieng rended for its intrinsic worth
and comments such as "ya...we get a lot of THOSE..", the whole thing bieng quite litteraly a modern archiological dig for treasure, and at $10000/ton for #2 copper, the digging is quite enthusiastic........but certain things, get reverantly.,...removed from the maw, set aside and traded back into the world, to be rebuilt
and put into service.....
The main issue I see is that the old axiom of supply, following demand has been perverted by advertising, and it is now possible to supply demand for ANYTHING, and largely face no repercussions, as the market is so large, and moving so fast, that concensus amongst end users dissatisfaction cant coaless to the point of financial penalties on the designers and pervayors
of junk. And as junk, can be made junkier, and therefor cheaper, good stuff is pushed into unprofitability......except in industrial and comercial versions of products, where there is no room for shenanigans involving durability OR useabality.
I know this isn't really about bike gears, but... "people will get it" - yes and no. Since the shift-of-least-resistance is the one to smaller sprockets, a lot of clueless cyclists with 3x gearing are riding around in small-small gear combinations which are the worst - least efficient and most wear-prone.<p>Maybe that's why the bike industry went to 1x drivetrains. That, or being able to sell you $250 cassettes where a $20 one used to do.
The popcorn button on a microwave actually does something unique, or at least it does on microwaves with a real popcorn button. I think microwave designs are only bad insofar as they have been made so cheap that the special functions have been made vastly less useful.<p>Obligatory Technology Connections. <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=UiS27feX8o0</a>
One-based indexing is an example of this. It's always argued as being familiar, as if people learning to program couldn't deal with adding 1.
I couldn't agree more. However the reason we have a Popcorn option on the microwave is because it makes the difference at the point of sale, not at the point of use. Most people when presented with two devices that essentially do the same thing, but one has more options will chose the one with more options because they have been lead to believe it's better.<p>Design is so often polluted by marketing. The direction of progress from concept to design to marketing to sale should be one way only.
bike gears are numbered now? Is 1 high, or 8? I press the little button at the front to pop one gear up, and push that big thumb lever to push the chain back up the cassette, it's intuitive. If I need to check if the bike is in the right gear (not concerned exactly which one) I pedal a little. What product manager added _numbers_ to bike gears?
> Along the same lines: one of the worst misconceptions in product design is that a microwave needs to have a button for every thing you could possibly cook: “popcorn”...<p>On a tangent, the popcorn button actually has a purpose on well-designed microwaves: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Limpr1L8Pss" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Limpr1L8Pss</a>