UI Familiarity (oven tangent)

This little (probably won't be by the time I finish writing) excerpt formulated itself while walking around an appliance showroom with my mom.

It is always fun to dream. Since I was able to use the internet, I found myself browsing various consumer markets for things that I rightfully could never afford. Browsing the Porsche website and speccing out the most gorgeous 911 gt3 money could buy, or looking at zillow listings for homes while I was in my mid-teens, dreaming is a core part of being human. Now how that that correlate back to applications...

Any showroom is a dangerous place to find yourself when you're in the market for something new, especially when constrained by a budget. As both I and my mom wandered the showroom floor, looking for appliances to spec out a kitchen in our soon-to-be-built house, the most attractive options were of course- in the most expensive showrooms. Nonetheless being able to physically touch the knobs and the surfaces of the appliances really helped in distinguishing the build quality and feel of certain appliances. As all of this was incredibly new to me, I was able to learn about the different pricing ranges and feature sets of ranges and dishwashers and fridges... Normal things to learn at 20 years old I guess??

After doing the rounds through the showroom floor we found ourselves in the last section of the showroom that showcased all the appliances lined up to showcase differences. As we wandered around, I found myself absolutely glued to the wall of double-stack ovens. After messing with the functionality of an appliance- I came to an interesting realization that left me really baffled while leaving. It really showcases a shift in many industries in the world of User Interfaces and the overall User Experience of a lot of modern "smart" products.

It was so interesting to see that the majority of ovens on that wall all used the same touchscreen system installed. Now, this was definitely a result of the showroom favoring a parent company with their sub-brands, but it was very interesting to have the user interface feel the same in a top-of-the-line GE Monogram oven and a GE Profile which is almost a third of the cost. This would be a great thing if it didn't feel a bit unresponsive. I think this might have been because of the large use of photographs depicting food, which likely slowed down available processing power, or the touchscreen capacitance being lower similar to many oven touch surfaces (residual grease). While this was very case by case, as more brand structures start to become more interconnected you don't even notice that half the market is from the same manufacturer until you see their onboard displays with the same image!

There are plenty of underlying factors that resulted in this dynamic, but something that came to mind was that a lot of times it does feel like touchscreen systems have more commonly been an afterthought or mass-produced product. Especially for ovens and stoves, where manufacturers have completely forgone most if not all analog dials and buttons in exchange for expansive touch surfaces.

This transition from analog to digital has captivated so many consumer markets and for good reason! Digital displays can convey significantly more information and embed countless more controls in a given space. Most importantly, this is only best employed if the touch interaction is more seamless and easier to use than their analog counterparts. I feel like another important thing to consider is the latency of the touch surfaces being used. As our brains are so used to our primary devices (usually our smartphones), anything that is more unresponsive to use feels lacking. This is likely why those oven displays felt so bloated to use to me as I am used to the latency of applications on my smartphone and pc.

Ultimately this boils down to two thoughts inside my head. Having the latency of touchscreen devices be comparable to the user's previous device experiences, and also the importance of having unique and individual user interfaces. It was very interesting to see different tiers of devices have the same moderate feel and experience to use. The look and feel did not change despite the extra seven thousand dollar increase.

Small tangent on repetitive UI development... I wish that more companies would make the UI of their touchscreen-based devices one of the nicest and most focused aspects of the product, as it is the most interacted component. Anyways- an oven is an oven... and its purpose is not to be a responsive touch surface, and more to cook food. The priorities are where the priorities should be!

Update:

and here I am applying to an internship position at GE! how the tables turn... I still want to keep this up to show my thought initial thoughts before I met the sales representative and learned more about the ecosystem behind GE software development. (I still do miss the integration of analog control surfaces on devices in general).... and truly hope that it starts to make a comeback like it is with programmable buttons on phones. Imagine a multipurpose dial with haptic feedback on ovens to control various integer parameters!!!