Comments on: Bad user interface design: hotel showers

By: JohnH

JohnH — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:50:30 +0000

My favorite hotel shower control was at a nice hotel in downtown Tokyo. There was a knob labeled in degrees Celsius, with blue-thru red underneath (cool thru hot) the numbers, and a tick mark at the top to let you know what you set it to. I forget if the knob pulled in an out to increase/decrease flow, or if there was another knob for that. It seemed to work perfectly – I wish I had one at home.

By: SteveBrooklineMA

SteveBrooklineMA — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:13:01 +0000

Karl is right. Unfortunately, in the US I am seeing more and more single handle controls which allow for temperature regulation, but which have no facility at all to adjust the flow rate! They are either on full-force or off. Terrible!

By: Thomas Guest

Thomas Guest — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:10:00 +0000

Funny you should mention this — I’ve just returned from a camping holiday where the showers had a single button operation. You push the button to get a hot shower lasting arond half a minute. (If you’ve ever been in the sea in Cornwall, you’ll know that a hot shower is always what’s wanted.) For an extended shower, push the button again, or hold it down.

By: Karl Ove Hufthammer

Karl Ove Hufthammer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:00:54 +0000

Well, I have the same feelings about your US-style knobs. Why do I have to manually mix hot and cold water? (The same is true for faucets, by the way.)

One knob for hot/cold and one for water pressure is much better design, IMHO. Actually, I prefer the handle variant, where you turn the handle to change the temperature and push/pull it to change the water pressure (from off to full pressure).

But I wonder why knobs are used at all. One is never sure which way to turn it, and the labeling is often confusing (especially if the labeling is on the knob instead of surrounding the knob). Surely a clearly marked horizontal slider would be better.