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Comment by avs733 | Hacker News Reader

We have one it’s great.

The ability to start it, and confirm it’s started is a game changer. Especially because it’s preloaded with the chemicals.

We don’t want to start it until we’re sure all the floating dishes actually got loaded. There’s a stray dish, a glass, life’s just a little chaotic getting dinner cleaned up and everyone to bed. We forget or we hit start but someone else opens it to add something. Without the act of adding soap and with two or three people adding things it’s surprisingly easy.

A lot of these are features as a single guy I found stupid. Now married with a kid they are just little enablers of greater calm.

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Wouldn't a simple LED indicator have the same result? My "dumb" dishwasher has a small light it shines on the floor when it's on. Also, if I set it up and close it without actually starting it, it beeps to let me know.

If I’m in the kitchen sure!

But after a 10hr work da bookended by 2 hrs on each side playing with my daughter and 1hr of dealing with life stuff I want to get into bed.

Beds on the second floor…I can get up and go downstairs and check the light. Or I can look at an app on my phone.

I’ll totally admit, I was incredibly anti smart appliance. I don’t want a tablet on my fridge. But done well, done quietly, they can actually put some really nice features in my life.

Washer/dryer - I can keep loads of laundry moving while working in the yard and I get an alert when the dryers done

Fridge- reminds me when it needs a new water filter and let’s me auto reorder it from Amazon. If it breaks a tech can remotely troubleshoot it and bring the right part the first time.

Dishwasher - see above. It also has the little light.

Until I was a parent. I would have laughed at all of that. And I still follow internetofshit on twitter

Someone still has to be there in person to put the dishes in the dishwasher, add the detergents, and close it. All this seems to be doing is moving the next step "Pressing the start button" further away behind more unnecessary steps (Search app store for dishwasher app, download dishwasher app, create dishwasher app account, connect dishwasher to wifi/bluetooth and pair with diswasher app, press "start wash" on dishwasher app from your bedroom and hope that whomstever loaded the dishwasher in person closed the door and added detergent)

The use cases given above are legit. Doing yard work, see the notice from machine that it is done, so I can go move to the next load. Or, close it, but not start in case I find a few extra items.

None of that is necessary, sure. But, also isn't worth vitriol from the crowd that hates them.

I always laughed at this, until I became a parent, but am now utterly convinced that there are a lot of features out there that look stupid until you are a parent

why does my fridge need to text me if the door is left open? that's ridiculous!

Well yeah...but if your teenager leaves it open, as teenagers are won't to do, how would I know if I'm in an office in another part of the house? (hypothetical, I don't have teenagers but I was one).

We (partner, me , contractor) are renovating a house right now. There is a kids bathroom upstairs. I FOUGHT and I mean fought my partner and the contractor over one feature I wanted. I won and am so happy. That feature? The whole floor is sloped towards the external wall, the whole floor (from door to door wall to wall) is a three inch high sealed tub, and there is an emergency drain with an oil filled p-trap that just dumps outside. Cost us an extra $1,000. That's less than the deductible on our home owners insurance and way less than the damage a flooded bathroom would cause. The user research here was totally in how many families (including mine) had kids accidentally flood a bathroom doing dumb stuff and ruin the space below it as well.

Features are driven by user research, or should be. Rather than just calling it dumb because it doesn't fit your use case - think about the other users who might benefit. Especially when you are looking at feature that don't make sense if people behave rationally.

Sloping to drain like that sounds interesting. I've often been curious why large locker room methods aren't used in houses. I'm assuming it is mainly aesthetics?

I would imagine speed/cost/aesthetics. The builders aren't going to think about long term repairability and few home owners would know to think about something like this or come up with a workable (and code compliant) solution.

We have had to be extremely diligent with our contractors because of the number of times/things they do where they just operate on the autopilot of what is typically done. Its human nature, but the norms in building homes to me are just wildly outdated. Wildly.

The only improvement on that which I've seen is a dishwasher which projects the runtime left onto the floor (instead of just a off/on light).

Why can't it just display that on the screen?

In Germany it's fairly usual to have your dishwasher set in to the kitchen cabinets - you wouldn't know which cupboard is the dishwasher half the time. Having it project on to the floor means you don't need to have a screen that can't be seen while the door is closed (ours has buttons and screen on top edge, which you can't see while the door is closed.)

Many don't have screens. Buttons are hidden when door is shut.

The siblings have it right - I had to google what a dishwasher with an externally visible screen would even look like.

Stray dish? Put them in later when you find them. Or in the sink. I've never ever lost any sleep over this one. Somebody doesn't bring their dishes back from whereever - I'm not going to hunt for them.

My ~25 year old dishwasher has a delay-start. That solved the stray dish issue for us.

Doesn't work for me because half the time someone doesn't close the dishwasher completely.

Definitely user-specific though. I have a wife and two kids, and we just use the dishwasher differently. It never sits with dirty dishes, it always gets loaded up started right now. If you open it to find dishes inside, they are clean. The only benefit I'd get from wifi is a notification that it's done cleaning. Not to say your use case isn't valid, because YMMV. But plenty of people other than single guys find wifi on a dishwasher useless ;-)

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