
Washing Machine for Men - ckluis
https://medium.com/p/b6f927bbb538
======
patio11
This is inspired UX work, but I doubt it would actually sell washing machines.

My wife and I recently tried to buy a rice cooker. I said "We should buy a $60
rice cooker." She said "We should buy $JAPANESE_BRAND, because it has more
features. It will cost us $600." I said "I have, in observing your use of rice
cookers, never seen you press any button other than Cook The Rice."

This was not an optimal thing to say.

We will purchase a $600 rice cooker.

[Edit to add: Relatedly, the vast majority of men professing "I do not know
how to use a washing machine!" are signaling their values, to whit that they
believe washing clothes is beneath their notice, not signaling that they are
intellectually incapable of memorizing a four-step process which you could
train a chimpanzee to do.]

~~~
gus_massa
There is still hope. Microwaves use to have a lot of buttons, but since a few
years ago there are some models with only two buttons: “Add 30 seconds” and
“Cancel”. I think that most of them are used in public places, like the
University cafeteria.

At home, my microwave has only two dials “power” and “time”. I like the time
dial, because it’s easier to choose the time analogically that convert it to
digits and choose which buttons to push.

~~~
Tcepsa
The difference being that with a microwave like that if you screw up and add
too much time the worst that will happen is that you'll have ruined your meal
(and I am expecting that most people are not using microwaves to cook things
that cost over ~$10 pretty much ever). If you screw up with a washing machine,
even a super dumbed down one, the stakes could be a lot higher; try explaining
to your wife how you ruined her $200 (or even $2000) dress because she spilled
spaghetti sauce on it and so you pushed the "very dirty" button.

In a sense, I think that washing machines are so popular and there is such a
wide variety of them because they do a very good job of selling a lie, and
that lie is something like, "I will make it so that you do not have to think
when you do laundry." People who have to interact with these machines tend to
realize that this is a lie pretty early on, and that no, you still have to
think to use the machine. However, the sheer magnitude of things they have to
think about (colors, material, water temperature, volume, intensity of
spinning, detergent, surfactant) can be overwhelming. When coupled with the
fact that there is usually no good, solid guide that you can just read and go
"Oh, now I know exactly how to wash all of my clothes and have no fear that
they will get ruined!" and the fact that the washing machine is still sitting
there, whispering that lie at you, that this should be easy because you have a
washing machine, the cognitive dissonance can get pretty strong. At the same
time, it's subtle enough that we usually don't realize that if we took a
couple of hours to study it and better understand how these things work we'd
probably be fine. So instead we cautiously try to find a couple of collections
of settings that work pretty well for most of our stuff. Once we find them
then we stick with those programs and usually it works out pretty well, but
there's still that tiny fear in the back of our minds that maybe this time
will be the one where something goes Horribly, Horribly Wrong.

~~~
gus_massa
I usually do the laundry. I’ll just repeat one of my sibling comments:

 _I use my washing machine regularly and it’s easy. Always use the “11”
program (35°C=95°F). You can also use the “1” program (90°C=195°F) if you
don’t want to see your cloths again. It has all the numbers between 1 and 16,
but I guest they are not real, only for cosmetic purpose :)._

[Note: She once used “1”. It was not a good idea.]

I separate the cloth by color: white, blue, red, black, yellow+green, gray
goes with white or black. (Be careful with blue, because it will usually stain
the other cloths. Sometimes red may stain too, but blue always stains.) Always
in “11” (35°C=95°F). Then dryer.

------
vosper
I was going to protest the "for Men" title, and suggest that if 58% of British
men can't understand how to use a washing machine then that's an unflattering
reflection of gender imbalance in household chores; "men just need to learn
how to do it."

But then I saw the pictures, and remembered my time living in London and
traveling in Europe, and how confusing I found the washing machines and their
universe of iconography (every single machine has different icons).

I grew up in New Zealand, where we had a locally designed Fisher & Paykel
washing machine [1]. It had a few settings, but there was one default called
"regular" that invariably did a good job, so I always just used that - I would
literally turn the machine on and press "start". It figured out the water
level for itself.

Now that I live in an apartment block in the USA I use a shared commercial
coin-operated Maytag washing machine. It probably has even fewer options than
the Fisher & Paykel. My wife and I take turns doing the washing, and the only
settings we ever change are "warm" (underwear, socks, towels) or "cold"
(everything else). That's it, and it works perfectly.

I don't know why feature-creep plagues European washing machines but it
reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s PCs with their byzantine terminology and
myriad acronyms.

[1] like this, but not the exact model:
[https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/O6SmbWnGlvA/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i1.ytimg.com/vi/O6SmbWnGlvA/maxresdefault.jpg)

------
VLM
I laughed out loud at the horrific GUI icons. We've got "wash a peacock" which
probably violates some animal cruelty laws "the headless horseman is drowning"
which is probably emergency shutdown because a pet got into the machine (see
above) "turn counter clockwise to loosen screws" aka enter maintenance mode or
"tip recliner chair over backwards" which is probably some nod to the auto-
balancer for the spin cycle, probably. I just love GUIs, they make interfaces
so intuitive and simple compared to plain text menus.

The weird part of the article is for decades I've been stuck doing the laundry
because its a "programming job" which is more my lifestyle than my wife, so
I'm way more comfortable doing it than her. The washing machine is already a
"mans washing machine". The "womans washing machine" would have one button
labeled "nag husband" to notify me, and a separate set of controls for me to
actually use when I arrive. I have a gut feeling that HN readers are going to
get stuck programming the washing machine regardless of their sex unless their
S.O. is the superior programmer in the family. Its the same way with cooking,
its a simple procedural program with a couple subroutines and some library
routines, whats so complicated about cooking other than the real time OS
aspects of trying to get a whole meal to completion more or less
simultaneously?

Personally I think a data flow diagram UI would be a heck of a lot simpler and
easier to use. Its the kids stuff so its filthy so soak and scrub the hell out
of it in high temp water. Its my biz casual work clothes so press "permanent
press" button and walk away. Its blankets and sheets so slow spin because its
going to be out of balance no matter the supposed auto-balancer. This is
intuitive with a data flow diagram or procedural programming but pretty
mystifying with an object oriented GUI where everything is marketing trademark
or incomprehensible icons.

The other comedy is its a commentary on lifestyle where its important to spend
hours a month studying fashion and hours standing in stores to make a
selection but once you do the only reason for existence, that being consuming,
once its bought then spending 30 seconds and no money learning how to keep it
clean is just waaaaay tooooo muuuch, so just walk around like pigpen or
wearing pastel colored former-whites or whatever other epic fails.

------
VLM
I also forgot GUI issues WRT greenwashing. My washer is green but that ruins
clothes, so every time you boot it up you have to tell it to rinse the soap
out, and let it soak a bit, and run the spin extra long to get rid of water,
and use warmer water. Or just wash everything twice, which wastes far more
water than just doing it correctly the first time.

Its always easier to ship something that meets the numbers but doesn't
actually work, than to ship something that both meets the numbers and works.
Therefore you have to do a lot of programming every time you boot up, to
prevent "save the planet".

Eventually we'll need to flash the eeproms to get some super greenwashed
appliance to actually work. But for now, the UI involves a lot of "useless"
reconfiguration on every boot.

Aside from the washer, both the dryer and the dishwasher and the fridge and
the thermostat are greenwashed out of the box and need reprogramming to
actually work. The fridge wanted to greenly keep my food at like 55F until
reconfigured away from green mode, now it works fine.

------
gus_massa
I use my washing machine regularly and it’s easy. Always use the “11” program
(35°C=95°F). You can also use the “1” program (90°C=195°F) if you don’t want
to see your cloths again. It has all the numbers between 1 and 16, but I guest
they are not real, only for cosmetic purpose :).

