Comment by jsnk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsnk | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I read someone write about UX about anything, one common quality I spot is how negative the writer is about the object in discussion. They all take the tone that they know something more than the people who created it. Have these UX people given any considerations to countless number of factors involved in something seemingly simple as installing a urinal?

Immediately questions sprung up for me. Has the writer thought about possible regulations surrounding installation of urinal in millions of localities around the world? How about the regulations of manufacturing urinals? There's also countless rules surrounding import/export laws for 200s countries around the world. I'm not even accounting for interstate laws within US and other countries. This was just grand legal issues alone. Consider availability of time before deadlines, experts who can install the urinal, money budgeted for urinals and bathroom space, etc... You can imagine countless situations where even installing "subpar" urinals are actually really hard.

My criticism also extends to the book that started it all, The Design of Everyday Things. It's such a simplified platonic world view, I couldn't take the book seriously. The condescending tone of voice the author had was really annoying as well.

The author also overlooks some fairly major usability factors in urinals, such as the fact that the ones that go all the way to the floor inevitably get clogged up with the bits of trash that easily falls into them, and the fact that using a child-height urinal increases splashing considerably for taller men. I also didn't see any discussion about the splash-mitigating properties of various shapes of urinals, which I think is one of the most important factors.

You can't necessarily just decide you're a Designer of Everyday Things(TM) by critiquing them solely from the standpoint of an end-user who considers himself observant.

But why defend and keep regulations that make things harder to use?

I'm sure there are many regulations that are born out of sensible tradeoffs, but then the things you are defending aren't the regulations, they are the other sides of the tradeoffs.

Reminds me of building codes for waterless urinals. Here is California the building code requires them to be plumbed with incoming water even though no water is needed, as a sop to the plumbing community.

"Provide water distribution and fixture supply piping, sized as required elsewhere in this code, roughed-in immediately adjacent to each waterless urinal fixture installed."

Surely flushless urinals still need to be cleaned and having piped in water is both more efficient and safer (no sloshing water buckets around)?

The ones I've seen aren't visibly hooked to the incoming plumbing (it's just porcelain all the way to the top).

The janitor gets water from a wall mounted faucet or from the sink in the janitor's closet to clean the urinals, the capped off pipe above the urinal does nothing except make the installation more expensive.

At one new building I worked in, they had to put in standard water based urinals to pass inspection then replaced them with waterless urinals for their LEED certification -- presumably now the codes allow for waterless urinals, but apparently still require the plumbing.

Such a measure allows waterless urinals to be more easily replaced by water-flush urinals.

Given the extent to which I despise low-flow toilets, for their propensity to be clogged by even the most modest of turds, I am glad to see that someone is thinking ahead on the possibility that the current popularity of no-flush urinals may fade in time.

This code makes converting new construction to flush urinals similar in cost to re-converting old construction that had been previously converted to no-flush.

It seems like a good idea to me, especially for public buildings, but even so, it is completely wrong for a government to force this one upon everybody. This is the kind of thing that gets wielded as a hammer against off-grid aficionados that install composting toilets, because they do not wish to connect to the muni water supply and sewers.

Laws that increase the minimum cost of doing something are a very significant barrier to innovations and locally appropriate technologies.

Clearly you are using an inferior low-flush toilet. I have a 1.2 gallon model (American Standard Champion 4) that has never once failed to work in a single flush, and a _lot_ of toilets fail me. Including the monstrously high-volume ones they have in the British Isles.

as you've shown, upbeat critique is hard

Oh, the irony!

You are right - I went to a vo-tech school that had an engineering class and our class project at the end of the year was to create a new toilet seat (not even full toilet) and the amount of R+D (which includes massive UX studies, research etc) is astronomical, and this was back in the 90's :)

It also is a useless tone to take when trying to implement UX improvements. Especially if you are new, getting a team on-board with a design change you think is glaringly obvious does not work if you don't follow the basics of how to win friends and influence people.

Criticism is useful for bloggers, because it always sounds more sophisticated than optimism or praise.

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