What's Cooking in Your Kitchen?

Important Terms:

Accessibility

Aesthetic-usability effect

Affordance

Color

Confirmation

Forgiveness

Pictorial Realism

Visibility

 Actual Stove:

 Stoves are a necessity in kitchens. Every household has a stove in the kitchen in one form or another. Stoves should be designed in such a manner that most people are able to use the stove with little to no difficulty. In other words, the kitchen stove should be highly accessible to people with and without disabilities The stove in my current kitchen is a little dated and shows little aesthetic-usability effect. I would not have a desire to purchase this stove and install this into a modern-day kitchen. Although this stove is not as attractive as stainless steel appliances, it does display a few human factors terms.

The manufacturer of this stove added pictorial realism icons above the knobs to indicate the eyes to which the knobs correspond. The design of the icons look exactly like the stove top. The eye that the knob controls is indicated by the color red,  which serves as a redundancy gain. The color red indicates exactly which eye (i.e., front left, front right, back left, or back  right) will heat up when the knob is turned. The color red is also a universal symbol for indicating danger, such as a hot surface. Another redundancy gain found on this model stove is the temperature gauge included on each knob. The temperature gauge includes abbreviations such as low, med, and hi. Between each abbreviation are tick marks that allows the user to control the temperature of the eyes. To assist in the understanding of the abbreviations, the color red makes another appearance in the tick marks between med and hi.

The stove light switch allows illustrates affordance. When the light switch is on, the switch displays a red color to inform the user that the light is on. The knobs and switch serve an affordance factor. The way the knobs are designed summons the user to grasp the knob and turn to the desired temperature, while the switch is designed in a way that evokes a desire to press the switch into the on position.

This model stove contains a confirmation design. To use the oven, the user must select the function he or she wishes to use (i.e., Bake or Broil). The user can adjust the temperature by pressing the up arrow with a plus sign or the down arrow with a minus sign; however, before the oven will preheat, the user is warned that he or she must press the Start button. The oven will not preheat unless the Start button is selected. A redundancy gain can also be found when preheating the oven. Not only will the screen provide a message that the user must press Start, the oven will emit an audible warning that the oven will not preheat unless Start is pressed.

This stove, although dated, is ergonomic and affords the user with user-friendly functionality. However, this stove design can be improved.

 Ideal:

 Design can always be improved to create more user-friendly and more aesthetic-usability in products. To improve the  design of this stove, the manufacturer can implement a new cooktop design that is flat. A flat cooktop design would  prevent accidental misplacement of the cookware and offer more stability. The stove should also incorporate some type  of confirmation that the eye on the cook type is on. Perhaps the manufacturer should incorporate a light next to each eye  to indicate that the intended eye is on. To increase the aesthetic-usability of the product, the manufacturer can  incorporate more sleek angles and a nice stainless steel and black finish to increase the the visual appeal of the product.  My ideal stove would look similar to the following pictures:

 Each knob shows pictorial realism, redundancy gain, affordance, and color to draw attention and group elements with  similar meanings. The only improvement I would like to see with the knobs is more accessibility for individuals with  arthritis  or individuals without the ability to grasp items. Perhaps a better accessibility would be to incorporate buttons  with a large amount of forgiveness to ensure that the individual intended to turn on the stove.

 The flat cook top allows the user to use hot pans without fear of not placing the pan directly over the eye of the stove and tipping over, which could lead to second- or third-degree burns or grease fires. The white lines against the black  background of the cook top allow for high visibility, creating ease of use for individuals with deficiencies in their vision.

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