First time using oven

This afternoon, when I was struggling what I still can publish for this October blog my friend invited me to her house to make mini cupcakes. This was my first time to make mini cupcakes as my house does not have oven. Thus,I accepted my friend's spontaneous invitation. And, I was really happy that she had invited me when I saw her oven.

This was the oven. A new oven her mother has just bought three months ago.








What interested me was this! Look at the image below.

Looking from top to bottom, you can see that the top button was to adjust the temperature of the oven; the bottom button was to adjust the time to use to bake or make something; then how about the middle button?


What do you think the middle button is made for?  


























Actually, the middle button was used to adjust according to the food that you want to bake. For example, if you want to bake cake or make pizza, you need to turn the button clockwise (the button can only be turned in clockwise direction!) to the picture that has a fan in it. However, how do I know to operate the middle button? My friend asked her mother for the answer, and in fact her mother knew the operation of the middle button was because of experience. In other word, her mother had gone through many trials and errors, and that trials and errors gave her the knowledge of how to operate the button.

And fortunately this unclear middle button gave me the idea to write this post!

From the image above, (from top to bottom) the top and bottom buttons have clear and visible instructions on how to use the object. For example, when we want to adjust the time of 10 minutes to make mini cupcakes, we could clearly see that there was a timer icon beside the bottom button, which directly gave us the message that this button is to adjust the time to make things. However, the middle button did not convey such direct message to us. We could guess that the middle button is about heat, but how can people who are not experienced in baking know that if the food they are making needs a fan to heat the food. Preece, Rogers and Sharp (2002) stated that visible functions are more likely to allow the users to know how to use; however, when functions are not visible for users to understand, it makes users more difficult to know how to use. 

Thus, I think that the designer of the oven can try to make something similar to the image 1b for users to easily understand how to use the middle button. For example, if the users want to make pizza or bake cake, they can just turn the button clockwise to the pizza icon or cake icon. 

Image 1a: The Actual

Image 1b: My Suggestion

In conclusion, if the oven has the same function as image 1b, don't you think that it will be much better for all of us as we will not overheat our food, and the food will not burn due to the heat?

PS: Since earlier I mentioned that I went to my friend's house to make mini cupcakes, here is the cupcakes that we have made. They were delicious, in fact!

Reference: 
Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H. (2002), Interaction design: beyond Human-Computer Interaction, New York: Wiley, p.21

Bad experience with petrol station

Every day, most of us will be searching for a target amongst the distractors. Thus, the representations of the target should be able to facilitate our visual processing and attention as Eimer and Kiss (2008) stated that when targets that we are searching are defined by a specific characteristic, like color, we tend to focus towards the specific feature, which will then control our attention in visual search task.  

Then, in the real world, what will happen if the specific characteristics of the targeted object are different from what we are searching for?

Last two weeks, when my sister was driving my family and I to one of the dimsum's restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, the car almost ran out of oil. Then, she decided to go to the nearby Shell station to top up the oil. 

Speaking of which, I have been going to petrol station to top up the car oil for many times, even before I got my driving license. Therefore, going to a petrol station to top up for car oil is really an easy piece of work to be done. However, on that day other than topping up the car oil, I was asked to help looking for the petrol gun that we wanted to use because my sister and I did not know how to differentiate which is which unless i could see the word 97 from the small stations.

At the Shell station

There were so many cars in the Shell station, and only two small stations were emptied. Then, my sister drove straight to the direction. Meanwhile, she continuously asked me which one we were going to use. Honestly, I was in the exactly same situation as her; I did not know whether which we should go for.

Experience of looking for the right fuel 

I knew that we wanted to use the fuel 97, so I asked her to drive slightly closer for me to see the word next to the petrol gun, but it was really difficult to see the word in the car because the thick, black pipes was blocking our way to see the word clearly. The image below was not good in explaining the situation because i took this photo right in front the small station. So, please assume that if this small station was at the left hand side and my sister was driving to this small station, you might be able to imagine that how the black pipes will block our way to see the word 97 as the black pipes, rather at the side that do not have words, were right on the word that can help us to differentiate which oil pump was 95 or 97. 

(Image above is labeled as image 1)

But, please bear with me that I did not take the side of this picture to explain the situation clearer. 

Then, I asked her to reverse her car as I saw a guidance board (refer to the image beside) that could guide us from differentiating between fuel 97 and fuel 95. Right after looking at the board, I told my sister that fuel 97 might have the red color pump. Thus, both of us just focus on deliberately finding the red color pump. Yet, none of the oil pump was red in color. Instead, they were either yellow color or green color as you can see from the image 1. 

             

           

Based on the statement of Eimer and Kiss (2008), I could say that "The different colors of two information, Shell V-Power 97 (red in color) and Shell Fuel Save 95 (green in color), on the guidance board are the specific characteristics that have been defined by the Shell management".

Thus, after looking at this board, we tend to focus on the define characteristics on the board, which is the red color information to the similar characteristic of the target we were searching for, which is the oil pump as our attention is unconsciously controlled by the color we saw on the board.

Then, my sister drove back and forth, and a little closer than just now so that I could see the little white English word that states 97 and 95 (refer to image 1 for the little white English word that states 97 and 95). Unfortunately, I still couldn’t read the word distantly as the black pipes were blocking our way to look at the words accurately (which I already have explained earlier).

Eventually, I woke my father up and asked him which to go, and he directly pointed us to the right station. When I walked down from the car, I finally understand why the word of fuel 97 on the guidance board was red in color as from image 1 you can see that the sticker that stated 97 was red in color, rather than the oil pump itself was red in color.

Conclusion

Even though the color of the information on the board is equally the same as the color of the word beside the two pumps, because the former does not correspond to the color of the gas pumps, this might increase the time and effort of people in finding their target because color information will contribute to object recognition (Nako, Grubert, & Eimer, 2016). 

Recommendation

Thus, I think that if the color on the board is correspondent to the color of the oil pump, the other users will not experience the same difficulty as me when they are searching for their target in Shell station. In addition, having a high similarity color feature between the oil pump and the information on the board can help us to easily recognize our target. Otherwise, the Shell management could make the sticker bigger for everyone to look at it easily. Also, (looking at image 1) instead of putting the stickers beside the oil pump, the management can put the stickers sticker right above the oil pump for users to easily look at the word, fuel 97 or 95.  

References:

Eimer, M., & Kiss, M. (2008). Involuntary attentional capture is determined by task set: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1423–1433. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/ jocn.2008.20099

Nako, R., Grubert, A., & Eimer, M. (2016). Category-based guidance of spatial attention during visual search for feature conjunctions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human perception and performance, 42(10), 1571-1586. doi:10.1037/xhp0000244

Have you ever wondered...

Have you ever wondered how you can accurately open the car window without looking at the car window button? 

The pictures below are examples of the window buttons in two different cars. 

Although these two cars have slight different designs of car window buttons, I think that layout of controls and displays of the car window buttons are good examples of mapping because the (layout of) the buttons and displays are spatially correspondent to the devices being controlled, which are the car windows (Norman, 2013). Due to the mapping, users will easily know how to use the them. 

So, to give you a more vivid image in your head of why the car windown buttons are the good examples of mapping, I would slowly explain a step-by-step procedure of you driving the car while opening the windows. Before explaining the procedures, please look at the picture below. 

Image 1

Then, now assume that you are sitting in the driver seat (remember that in Malaysia the driver seat is always at the front right hand side, so imagine that you are sitting in the front right hand side), and you want to open the window that you are sitting at. To open the window, you have to either look at the buttons and put your hand to the window button or just touch the buttons and guess which button is correspondent to which window. Thus, to illustrate on the good examples of mapping, I would like you to assume that you are now busy looking at the road outside while touching the window buttons, Then, when you have put your hand on the window buttons, try to locate the button which is at the upper right end, which has been labeled as “A” in the image above. After locating the upper right end button, press on it, and your side of the window will open!

Since you have successfully open your side of the window, now assume that you want to open the window of the left passenger’s seat while still busy looking at the road outside. Similarly, you need to put your hand on the window buttons, but now rather locating the upper right end button you need to locate the bottom left button, which the button has been labeled as “C” in image 1. Press on it and the window of the left passenger’s seat will open. Thus, even if you want to open the window of the right passenger’s seat or front left seat, you just need to try to touch where the four buttons are, and just press on the particular button according to the layout of the car window because the layout of the car windows are correspondent to the layout of the buttons. Hence, if you want the front left window to open, just press on the top left button; if you want the right passenger's car window to open, just press on the bottom right button; if you want the front right window (which is the driver seat's window) to open, just press on the top right button; lastly, if you want the left passenger's car window to open, just press on the bottom left button. 

However, even though the buttons have good mapping design, the buttons are not effective enough for everyone to use them effortlessly because the four buttons are almost similar to each other (refer to the image 1); unless you are looking at buttons directly, with the sense of touch many users are highly unlikely to effortlessly distinguish the differences, and you can see that most users, including me will just simply press the buttons until their goal has achieved. For example, sometimes, ridiculously, I will open all the four windows, but in fact I may just want to open the window of the left passenger’s seat. 

Reference:
Norman, D. (2013). The design of everyday things: revise and expanded edition. Available from http://cc.droolcup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/The-Design-of-Everyday-Things-Revised-and-Expanded-Edition.pdf