The Anonymous Widower

I Have Issues With My Electrical Goods

Or should I say my washing machine and television?

Yesterday, I decided to wash a few towels. But in walking to the Bosch machine in my garage, one escaped my grip and after switching the machine on, on return I noticed the errant towel on the floor. So I went back to the machine with the idea of pausing it, so I could add the towel to the load. But this machine has no simple pause, so I could add to the load, unlike the old top-loading Hotpoint machines, we used for about thirty years. So now I will have to run another wash, just to get just one towel clean.

How eco-friendly is that?

And then there’s my really annoying Samsung television!

When I switch the Sony in my bedroom back on, it remembers where it was last time and connects to the last channel. As generally, I only watch or listen to two channels; BBC 1 and Radio 5 Live, it’s then a simple matter of keying in 1 or 705.

But not so my Samsung. On startup it insists of giving me a choice of umpteen useless channels I never watch and I have to press another button to get the last channel I watched.

That is just one button too many!

During the day, this is particularly annoying, as I generally have Radio 5 on in the background and when I come in, I usually want to get the latest news or sport.

It is also extremely verbose, when I use the on-board BBC iPlayer, as I have to scroll through endless features, I never use.

If I had designed this interface, all of those other features like players for ITV and Channel4, would be buried under a More button, until the television had discovered my pattern of usage. As the BBC iPlayer is the only thing in this area that I use, why isn’t the television adjusting its choices to my behaviour.

The television also has the annoying habit of switching itself off, when it deems I’ve watched too much television. As it’s probably been on silent and Radio 5 for a lot of that time, does it matter?

I suspect the idiot, who designed it, is as stupid as the television itself.

I’ve just heard that there is a new kettle coming out, that requires you to key-in a four-character code before you can boil the water. Apparently, there’s a new EU safety rule coming in.

There’s also the clock, that requires that it be adjusted to the correct time, at least once a day.

Why can’t we have simple design?

December 16, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | World | Crap Design, Television