ready? or not?
31 December 2005, 11:48 am
Why does this coffee machine have two different ready lights? I have no idea. They’re not always in synch, so they must indicate two different kinds of “readiness.” But the only readiness I’m interested in is whether or not it’s about to produce coffee.
Ye gods, this coffee machine looks like it was made by Lockheed Martin in 1947 for use in submarines.
But that’s not what I’m here to say. I was just going to point out that there is a very valid reason for two lights. The first is to say “the machine is powered on”. The second is to say “the water is hot enough to make coffee”.
I actually think the “ready” button actually has bit of usability thought put into it. The lazy engineer’s way of doing it would be to just put the light on the same circuit as the heating element, labelled “heating”, so that while the water was heating, it would be on, effectively making it a “not ready” light, though the meaning wouldn’t be that clear unless you understood how the machine worked.
The *really* lazy engineer’s way would be to have no ready light at all, resulting in lots of tears over badly brewed coffee, or the blaming of the machine.
Oh, I’m a total idiot. Disregard that last comment. I just didn’t see that there really were two ready lights.
That’s really stupid and confusing.
Yeah, I can’t see any reason (from a user perspective) that the two lights shouldn’t be AND-ed into a single indicator. The only time I’ve ever seen the red not-ready light lit was when the microwave on the same circuit was running, although many times I’ve seen the microwave on and the red light is off, so that may have been spurious. Since they don’t always show the same state, I presume the dual indicators might be helpful for a mechanic troubleshooting the thing.
Incidentally, it’s a cup-at-a-time unit and I’m pretty sure it only heats water on-demand, so I don’t think there’s any need for a “hot water” light. It does need some relax time between brewing cups, and I think that’s what the lower (green) light is devoted to indicating.
Also, the control panel doesn’t provide any indication for when the machine has been fed its fiddy cents and is really ready.
And as long as I’m whinging about usability, the rest of the panel is kinda dodgy too: