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June 23, 2005

Design on my mind

Interface design is even more interesting when language serves as a barrier and not an aid. At first I had to totally rely on visual cues and systems like color-coding. It made all of my daily tasks difficult and confusing, when an interface was particularly intuitive it really stuck out! Even now that I can read the phonetic system Kanji still serves as a barrier.
In Japan it seems like people are inundated with much more information than I experienced in the states. Perhaps people here have a higher tolerance for the cognitive friction created with information overload. I’ll try to post some examples next week. In the mean time here are some of the interfaces lurking around my house.


This is a microwave, toaster, oven and convection oven all rolled into one. Which really means that it doesn’t do any of those tasks really well, but it saves a lot of space! The preset buttons are strangly standard on most people’s micro-toast-ens. 1. warming 2. defrost (?) meat and 3.warm sashimi (2 numbers on one button, go figure?) 4.warm milk 5.cook leafy veggies 6.cook potatoes 7.this is to cook a strange egg pudding 8.cook GURATAN 9.cook KAKI 10.toast TO-SUTO 11.this one is to heat up CONBENI (convenience store) meals.
The start button sticks out in pink and the stop button is also easy to find. I have figured out how to use all of the settings but only with a lot of experimenting. I still wish the cake button would just make cake magically appear.



This is my aircon. This is also another jam-packed device with an air-conditioned, heater, fan, dehumidifier and humidifier. The led screen turns blue when it’s cooling and red when it’s heating, and yellow or white for other functions. It shows the current temperature and the target temperature and sometimes has a little spinning character or animation of a fan. This is it for temperature control in most homes (and schools and business), there is no central heating or air conditioning in Japan, power is just so expensive. A lot of people use gas heaters in the winter and now I’ve got a fan going most hours of the day. During the winter I was praying to the aircon-god, shutting myself off in the room with this thing in an attempt to keep from freezing to death, it was rough.



The remote is also color-coded. I love that the complicated buttons are hidden away. I’m sure there is a way to get the aircon working on a timer, but I’m not that advanced yet.



My laundry machine, this thing sucks. I sometimes venture into unknown territory and try different settings, but I can’t ever tell if anything has changed. The machine has an inner basket that rotates around with a strong force, tangling all my bra straps and stretching out all of my shirts. It only uses cold water and everyone in Japan line dries their clothing including me. The lid saves space by folding open and that’s the only thing I like.



くる　くる　すし! I went with my friend Ruriko to kaiten sushi (a sushi train, actually two sushi trains!). You pay by the plate and just grab whatever looks good. They were pulling fish out of a big tank and the only means of cooking were small blowtorches and an oven somewhere in the back for cakes that were rotating through with the sushi.



After sushi we had some spare time. We were in Matsuyama so we headed over to the ferris wheel to take in the night view of the city. Ferris wheel in Japanese translates to something like view wheel= KANRANSHA. I love how Japanese can be so literal sometimes.



I’ve almost forgotten what crossing lights look like in the states. The signs here are always a slight bit more detailed, and I think it makes them a little more difficult to take in quickly, but they’ve got more character.



He’s standing still, what makes you think you can act any differently?



All of the rice fields are filled with water and the reflections are especially beautiful at night.



That’s my local mini-mountain. It has a small temple at its base and one on top. A teacher was telling me that it used to be the home base for a troop of Tanuki (raccoon dogs), which I think is grand.






Just playing around.

Posted by theinfonaut at June 23, 2005 10:18 PM

Comments

Posted by: Francis at July 2, 2005 11:39 PM