Microwave Interface Redesign

BRIEF

Find problems people face with existing microwaves and redesign the interface to mitigate the problem

CONSTRAINTS

• Do not significantly alter the cost/manufacturing process.
• No touch-screens/voice assistants/apps.

Primary Research

For primary research we visited eateries around campus and homes. While it was worrying that for homes inside IIT Bombay, microwave usage might be less of an issue, since it is far from an ideal demographic of average users, we decided to go ahead with it due to logistical reasons. A simpler phone interview was also conducted for 11 more users to help triangulate the findings. It was helpful in determining that the detailed observations from the limited demographic were similar to the nature of issues faced by wider base of people.

To our surprise! The usability problems existed in this skewed set of users as well.

The study consisted of

Interviews and observations

Notes from User interviews

The interviews were semi structured and conducted in the context of their homes. The key points around which the interview happened were:

• The kind of food cooked in the household
• The general usage of appliances in the kitchen while cooking it
• The particular ways in which the microwave is used here
• Who all use the microwave in the house and for what activity
• The special occasions/recipes that require a microwave
• Why are they prepared occasionally(Are they microwave related)
• Where do they get stuck

Following the interview they were asked to perform a few operations using the microwave(ranging in time required & perceived difficulty) depending on time availability and their willingness, namely:

• Heat a glass of water
• Make popcorn(or any other regularly consumed easy to cook)
• Grill an available item(else Paneer was provided)
• Cook a hypothetical cake/Autocook menu item

The collected data was analyzed and segregated using affinity mapping to find patterns.

Common Issues

• Grill, Combo & Autocook don’t become part of the daily routine because of their complexity and deep nested menus
• Often parents have to wait for their children to do complex tasks
• No way to understand next step and identify your current state in the process

Specific problem Scenario

• Household help needs to perform only repetitive actions, but it is unnecessarily complex to teach (On this note, maids said that they don’t fiddle around too much with a microwave because they don’t really understand it(since it is not a physical process that they can see happening?) and think it’s expensive)

Secondary Research

Reading Instruction manuals, so that Users don’t have to

Synthesis

Condensing instruction manual to flowcharts

Commonly used options

Trends in the instructions suggests the use of these buttons + Ideation

Ideation & Exploration

Explorations for button placements

The buttons placement should make sense for the users and show their relation to each other.

Gestalt Principles used to create groups and establish relationships

The start and pause button has been modified to a more (now) universally identified media symbols standard (Namely, ▶️, ⏯️, ⏹️)

Panel v1 | Panel v2

Steps for a simple Microwave operation

Steps for Combi Convection(similar to Grill as well)

Walkthrough of Autocook

Default state | Press the Macro button(for children/Elderly/Repeated actions) | Panel shows all details, Press start

Conclusions & Reflection

The limited interactivity and the lack of colour made me appreciate the importance of Gestalt Principles and careful consideration. It forced me to reconsider every small detail and action at every step. The synthesis of the Instruction manuals helped to condense the long descriptive steps to a quick reference that proved very useful while designing the process chart. The process charts were then considered together to create a list of elements with their priority and relevance to each step. Because each element was not required at each step,

I decided to create layers of interactivity with active and passive visibility to separate them

The blinking feature for the currently active element hints the user of the expected input at that point, due to this, users feel that the microwave understands what they are doing and is responsive. To add to that, the fixed blue light for the completed steps assures them that they have indeed successfully completed them.

The macro buttons enable users to do complex tasks with a single click

This enables elderly, people with household help and kids to be able to use the microwave to its full potential without assistance.

Working with the constraints of an old microwave panel technology proved to be quite a learning experience!

Check out my other Projects!

That’s all folks