
Rice Cooker Technology - _pius
http://www.subtraction.com/2014/04/30/rice-cooker-technology/?utm_content=buffer41efc&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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CocaKoala
I'm not sure what this dude is complaining about. He says "Oh woe is me, my
rice cooker is so complicated! Look at this instruction manual" and then
proceeds to post a diagram that includes complicated steps like "put the rice
in the pot" and "plug it in". The actual cooking of the rice involves pressing
two buttons; one button is literally the power button to turn the damn thing
on, and another button lets you select what type of rice you want. If pressing
two buttons is considered to be a complicated process, how did he manage to
make the blog post?

The advent of fuzzy logic in rice cookers is pretty great, in my opinion;
maybe he doesn't get a lot of benefit out of the ability to cook e.g. brown
rice or bread or vegetables in his rice cooker, but if he's trying to complain
that this device is so so complicated, he should probably post an actual
complication that he has trouble with, instead of whining about pressing two
clearly labeled buttons.

~~~
keithpeter
The name of his Web site might be a clue.

An experiment: perhaps microwave cookers. Issue 500 free modified cookers to a
suitable target group who might need them, e.g. undergraduates. The
modification consists of a simple device that records the settings used each
time the microwave is used and uploads the results to a central server each
week.

My hypothesis is that the number of programs actually used will be a very
small subset of the total available. I know that my microwave oven is mainly
used to reheat leftover soup, and occasionally to make porridge in the bowl.
Highest power, 3 minutes or 5 minutes, that is that.

The _issue_ is to make the most commonly used settings easily found. Back to
UI design again.

Edit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674708](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674708)

Acomjean arrived at a similar place while I wrote this.

~~~
CocaKoala
the most commonly used settings on this rice cooker ARE the most easily found,
though! You press the power button! You press the "White Rice" button if
you're cooking white rice; you press the "Brown Rice" button if you're cooking
brown rice. This rice cooker demonstrates EXACTLY what you're saying should be
done, and yet this man complains.

~~~
slantyyz
If you look at the lineup of Aroma (the brand the OP chose) rice cookers,
you'll see that the author could have bought a simple one-button model just
like his old one, but chose not to.

[http://www.aroma-
housewares.com/kitchen/appliances/products/...](http://www.aroma-
housewares.com/kitchen/appliances/products/Rice%20Cookers.html)

In terms of whether his cooker will last 25 years, I'm not really sure how
good Aroma is as a brand, but most of the Asian people I know (I'm Asian too)
buy top end Japanese branded rice cookers like Zojirushi and Panasonic (aka
National) -- and these cookers last a really long time. When you eat rice
daily or almost daily, spending a little more for reliability is a no-brainer.

------
acomjean
Like microwaves which have about 30 cooking modes now and used to have a power
level and a timer.

I wonder if internet of things and google analytics will show what features of
appliances people actually use.

Oblig new yorker: [http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/No-I-don-t-want-to-play-
ch...](http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/No-I-don-t-want-to-play-chess-I-just-
want-you-to-reheat-the-lasagna-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8542213_.htm)

~~~
ChrisClark
My microwave actually crashes and reboots once in a while.

~~~
netcan
Really!?

I still don't understand why anyone would want a microwave with any controls
other than a power and timer wheel. I only see downside like an accidental
extra digit causing my leftover pasta to catch fire.

Who designs these things?

~~~
omilu
I love microwaves where the time is set with a dial, mine broke recently and I
couldn't find another one that had a dial (why are they so hard to find?), so
I settled for a conventional keypad one. To me it seems counter intuitive but
the keypad is much more difficult to use, I get a little irked every time i
interact with that thing.

~~~
wmil
The dials break easily, but they aren't a commoditized part so they're
difficult to replace. Number pads are more reliable.

------
xarien
If you eat brown rice every day, a decent induction rice cooker is absolutely
worth the money (bonus for GABA mode).

~~~
slantyyz
Even for white rice, I find the induction cooker is better. The only
difference between the rice cooker my parents have vs. the one I have is that
mine has induction, and mine consistently makes perfect rice, while the
quality of theirs varies.

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grosbisou
I have the same 'new' rice cooker. You have a button to turn it on and a
button to launch the cooking. I don't see what's complicated about it.

(The other buttons are for brown rice and delay cooking start. Pretty useful
too even if I never use them).

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scoofy
Survivorship Bias. "They don't make'em like they used to" because the ones
that broke have been dead and buried for decades, and the few that remain are
the only ones to be seen.

*edit: i accidentally selectioned a survivorship in my biases.

~~~
slantyyz
Don't know about that. Those National rice cookers that the OP mentions are
simple and extremely reliable. My parents, even though they upgraded, still
have two of them in storage, and they work to this day. And they've had them
as long as I remember, which would put them around 40 years old.

~~~
scoofy
I'm not saying that National Brand aren't good, i'm saying if you were in the
store in 1950, you'd see 3 rice cookers on the shelf and mutter that all this
new fangled technology always falls apart, and if it were up to you, you'd
still just cook rice in a pot, the old fashioned way. Only 20 years later
would you realize that your National Brand cooker is solid as a rock.

My point is that the article is talking about the pointlessness and failure
prone nature of feature creep, and i'm saying the framing is bs, because the
same thing could be said of the National Cooker if it weren't for surviorship
bias.

~~~
slantyyz
>> i'm saying if you were in the store in 1950,

Well, here's the problem. In his framing, he got his in 1989, which is a
different era from 1950. I had an older model (from the 70s) of the same rice
cooker handed down to me when I started college, also in 1989. In 1989, these
cookers were were already known to be simple and very reliable for a long
time.

The framing is actually BS because the company that makes the OP's new rice
cooker also makes a simpler rice cooker, that from a functional and esthetic
perspective, is almost exactly like the one he replaced. He basically chose to
buy the more complex one when a simple one was available, and that's on _him_
, not the technology.

The OP's also being disingenuous when he says his new low end rice cooker
won't last as long as his old high end rice cooker. I've had my digital
Zojirushi for almost ten years, and I don't think it will have any problem
lasting 15 more. The good rice cookers are built to last.

------
mrbill
Sometimes simpler is better - his old unit was most likely entirely mechanical
and involved an analog thermostat or thermistor and a single button. The new
one? has a control panel and a microcontroller/processor.

Things like this are why I got the simplest, most mechanical washer and dryer
set that Lowes offered when I moved nine years ago. I didn't want touchscreens
or LCDs; I didn't want to have to reboot my W/D if something went wrong. Not a
single problem in those nine years, and if something does break, it's going to
be a simple mechanical part that's easy to fix.

~~~
thinkt4nk
As the complexity/variability of a product's functionality grows, a product
team's ability to ensure quality across all functionality diminishes.

As a consumer of many kinds of things, I almost always gravitate toward the
offering that is most simple/focused in its purpose.

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arh68
I partly agree. I use 2 microwave buttons: popcorn & +1 minute. I kept my old
microwave that had 1 dial (since it's _half_ the controls, same machinery) but
I can't put it over the stove.

My Vitamix has great controls: a giant power switch, a knob, and a giant
_maximum power_ switch. My Kitchenaid is great, too: 2 metal levers and a
right-tighty metal-on-metal attachment arm.

It's those flat 'capacitive' buttons that I hate. My fridge has some. Did I
press it? I can't feel it in the dark. Did my elbow brush it?

~~~
ahjushi
Agreed! Unfortunately these things are giving way to LCD's and the flat
buttons, and not just in appliances. Cars are especially guilty of this
(switching from knobs and buttons to touchscreens) which require visual
attention instead of just feeling around and therefore make them more
dangerous. It's an ugly trend that is inconvenient in the kitchen, but could
be potentially life-endangering on the roads--I wish more companies would
realize that!

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joshuak
Make fun, but I think this is an excellent point about feature creep. If your
target market already has a 'good enough' product offering how do you
differentiate yourself to get someone to spend more on your equivalent product
or buy a replacement for something they already own and works fine.

This does not seem like a optimization by the marketplace towards better
products as some economic theories would suggest. Or is it?

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lowmagnet
You can still get the non-digital kind from Tiger, others.

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hkbarton
I think this is not about "complicate", this is about a kind of emotion that
author didn't want throw his old rice cooker :)

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carsongross
Compare and contrast with many of the new UX concepts being explored in the
web/mobile space...

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brianbreslin
Even these newfangled digital ones are pretty cheap now.

I love the idea of being able to schedule when to have it cook.

~~~
slantyyz
As with anything else, you typically get what you pay for. If you eat rice a
lot (i.e., almost every day), you are generally better off spending > $100 for
a good rice cooker, like a Zojirushi.

What really separates a good rice cooker from a bad one is how consistently
the rice is cooked when you make _larger amounts_.

