The washing machine analogy

2015, was the year I moved to Dubai. After series of apartment hunting and driving through peak traffic hours, I finally settled for one. All excited, I set out for furniture and home appliance shopping. Furniture was pretty straightforward; drive to IKEA and order all the standard sets. Then came home appliances, which wasn’t hard either. I walked into an electronics store and purchased a refrigerator, washing machine, cooking range and a microwave, all from top-selling brands. Within a week I got my furniture assembled and the appliances fixed! The first thing I wanted to do was my laundry (disclaimer: I haven’t done my laundry before by myself, I know! weird right?). How hard can it be, duh!. So all dirty clothes loaded up, I confidently shut its door. The front loading washing machine had a knob and few buttons. I looked at the knob, around it were options like dark wash, shirts/blouse, outdoor and many other confusing options. Twenty minutes later, I decided on an option. I turn to the set of buttons with various icons and see 1400 RPM on the screen! Seriously? Why do I have to know how many times the machine should rotate in a minute!? What’s next? Remind the machine that it’s purpose is to “wash clothes”?!?

Being a user experience designer, this seemed like a flawed system to me. I immediately googled the term “smart washing machine” and came across various machines with a touchscreen on them, but with the same icons as I have on mine.

Ever wondered if innovation is going in the right direction when you see a smartphone looking screen fixed on everyday appliances? Maybe it isn’t.

Manufacturers and companies are obsessed with adding a screen to their products to call them “smart.” We have touchscreens on everything now. Even a simple job such as opening a door lock is on an app! It seemed like a norm to complicate simple processes.

Let’s take the example of the washing machine. It has evolved from having few knobs to few more buttons, and now we find these buttons buried away into a UI.

A user need not know at what rpm (rpm = revolutions per minute, if you were still wondering) the machine should be spinning. Why can’t the appliance do its job without asking too many questions?

But things are slowly changing. Now with enhanced sensors, IoT (Internet of things) platforms, and AI (Artificial Intelligence) developments, the trend would soon move to a screen-less or minimal User Interface experience. We can already see LG trying to dispense the right amount of detergent and softener with its auto dosing system. We will soon see machines become aware of what it’s washing, the amount or kind of detergent required and how long it needs to spin to get your clothes clean without damaging it. We would no longer need a screen or all those complicated knobs! All we would require is one beautiful magic button which says “wash.” Thus giving us the ultimate user experience for washing machines.

Yes, this would involve a complex system which would possibly have numerous sensors and deep learning algorithms to learn your clothes! We could soon see consumer electronics companies invest in deep learning and cognitive cloud technologies to help a connected network of washing machines learn and maintain a universal data set of stains vs. fabric to wash more efficiently. Well, this would mean your appliance would become actually “smart.”

How do we design for the future?

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology.” — Steve Jobs

Designing for the future should aim to make technology work for the user seamlessly rather than the other way around. To achieve this, A UX designer should be at the top of his game and keep himself updated with the latest trends. S/he should no longer be designing for screens (as they currently do), but solve for the real people. They would need to think for solutions with three different hats on.

Business analysis & Strategy: Yes, we need to understand the problem and the flow/process. Help optimise it to get the most efficient and desirable outcome, thus working with experts and studying users (We at IBM Design call them sponsored users). Drawing a bunch of wireframes with no insights might not lead to the desired solution to a problem and does not make you a UX designer. Understand how your user interacts with the washing machine. Technology: Technology is an enabler. Everything we design should NOT revolve around it either. And a UI between a user and a job is a hindrance, try avoiding (or minimising) it! Of course, screens would not cease to exist; it would be used to display information or output or status. The washing machine still would need to indicate how long it would take to complete its tasks. We need to minimise user input and understand where technology can be used to skip steps and streamline the processes identified during our business analysis. Understanding which technology solves what is always a strong influence on dictating your designs. Aesthetics: Gone are those days where UX designers are someone who dumps tons of wireframes to a visual designer. We can see how the two are merging from time to time. User experience is end-to-end, and how something looks plays a huge role in how it would make a user feel about a product. I don’t imply that a user experience designer needs to work on visual or industrial designs, he or she should collaborate and be capable of logically understanding if something designed by a designer works for the overall experience. Back to our washing machine, the size of the “Wash” button and how information is displayed should be tested.

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Salman Amir is the Associate Design Director at IBM Studios based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.