Comment by drblast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drblast | Hacker News Reader

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Uggh. I have a microwave that must be designed by the Koreans in this article.

If I want to heat something up for thirty seconds, I have to wade through four menus and sub-menus:

Express cook (ha ha)-> 30 seconds-> OK-> Start

People who designed consumer microwaves have obviously never used one. I have NEVER cooked anything in the microwave that should have involved more than a single button press. If the cooking is going to take fewer than 30 seconds, I'm not going to need a timer; it's not like I'm going to go walk the dog with the rest of my time.

I never want to type in an amount of time and then have the microwave not begin cooking until I hit a Start button. I always want full power. I don't want to adjust the fan speed. Nobody has tried to cook actual meals in the microwave since 1985 so I don't need a chicken-pot-pie setting. I don't want the keys to beep loudly when I press them and I don't want the microwave to beep loudly when it's done because I don't want the kids to wake up.

I'd pay more for the lack of "features."

Wow. Every microwave I've used in years has had a "add 30 seconds" button that works regardless of whether it's adding to an existing countdown or starting for 30 seconds from zero.

However, it also doesn't take long for me to learn the microwave settings for my preferred popcorn brand/type for a new microwave: the one built-in at my apartment requires 2:40, and the new one at my work 2:30. I usually put those in directly rather than hitting "add 30 seconds" five times.

I also use the microwave for thawing beef, at significantly less than full power. I use it to heat frozen pot pies, since they come out at least as well as in the oven, and it's 13:30 instead of 45 minutes in the oven. But 7:30 of that is at half power.

I want to go back to my room and watch my show until the microwave beeps to let me know it's done. It's never occurred to me that I might want to mute or quiet it.

I guess microwave manufacturers make devices for me, and not you. :/

I guess so. I'm not really opposed to features; they're cheap and they add value for some people.

My beef is that the most common operation (heating something up quickly) should be really simple to do. I thought this was a fundamental idea in UI design, but it's broken on appliances everywhere.

Here's how it should work: numbers 1-10 represent commonly used cook times. 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90, 120 seconds...I hit one of those and the microwaves waits two seconds and then goes.

If I hit multiple numbers in rapid succession, I can enter an exact time.

The only other buttons on there should allow the functions you want too. A power level button, add 30 seconds, and the more advanced scheduling option that lets you set multiple times and power levels.

All options, which are almost always set-and-forget, should be accessible through a single button. My car does this well; I can change what I want displayed on the dashboard and what color it's in using two buttons. It's not a quick interface, but I only have to use it when I change the car battery, which is hardly ever.

My GE microwave has lots of features I never use. However, I can start nuking for 30 seconds or 1-6 minutes by pressing a single button. That "+30 seconds" button is probably be the best feature in the microwave. I won't deny, though, that a laundry list of features may have driven my purchase of this particular model. And since I didn't "test drive" it to see if it has any of the annoying crap like needing to set the date (really?) and time after a power outage just to cook anything like the last one I had -- I just got lucky.

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