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Pitch
Introducing the kitchen remote. Now you can control your appliances without having to run all over the kitchen. This single remote controls your fridge, oven and stove all in one device! No longer will users have to forget to preheat their oven. This remote will speed up a busy cook’s routine. The Kitchen Remote simplifies these controls by simply featuring one touch screen dial for all three appliances (the touch screen dial functions like the volume ring on the original ipod). We have removed the complexities of unnecessary buttons and labels to provide an intuitive and efficient experience. Simply select “stove”, “oven”, or “fridge” at the bottom of the remote, and rub the dial to activate the appliance.
Why it falls short
Though the Kitchen Remote may look sleek, it actually has bad mapping design. In order to have the remote work, a user needs to press one of the three buttons: the burner button, the fridge button, or the stove button. These buttons contain images of the appliance, but do not contain any labels. The lack of labels makes the action of selecting an appliance ambiguous. The purpose of the touch screen dial on the remote is also not apparent. The intended action is to change the temperature of the appliance. With no labels, the user must make an arbitrary choice to figure out the relationship between the appliance button and the temperature lever.
We have tried our best to design our kitchen remote, but we still have bad feedback. Our machine sounds really bad and it makes a lot of distractions for us. If we sell this machine, we will need to reduce the costs. Consumers will pick the cheapest one with good feedback. We need to plan feedback, especially the one that we need to pay attention to our machine. The feedback from users is essential for improvements, but it needs to be done properly.
The mental model for the remote causes issues when moving from appliance to appliance. The dial doesn't indicate whether turning it to the right makes the appliance hotter or colder. When you turn an oven or stove on, people’s mental model of a dial’s setting being increased makes them think the appliance will get hotter. When people turn a knob on a fridge to the right, the more intense setting is expected to colder. These are exact opposites. Since the remote doesn't indicate which appliance is being activated, a user could accidentally select the wrong appliance and yield the absolute wrong result. The user has no way of knowing if they are making which appliance hotter or colder. The mental models clash when switching between hot and cold appliances.
The sleek nature of the touch screen remote eliminates any sound or light capabilities. With a touch screen, the user lacks the ability to physically push a button, which makes it difficult to know whether or not their action was completed. Additionally, we didn’t want to have a light associated with a button because we wanted to make the product look as elegant as possible. This creates bad signifiers because the user will not know which action is being performed on the remote. The ambiguous pictures of the three appliances are also examples of bad signifiers on our remote. If the user is unfamiliar with an image, it will be hard for them to choose which action they would like to perform on the remote. Though the pictures make our remote look sleek and modern, it ultimately hinders the usability because users will have a difficult time choosing the correct action.
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