Rice Cooker Technology | Hacker News Reader

Rice Cooker Technology

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14 points_pius33 comments

I'm not sure what this dude is complaining about. He says "Oh woe is me, my rice cooker is so complicated! Look at this instruction manual" and then proceeds to post a diagram that includes complicated steps like "put the rice in the pot" and "plug it in". The actual cooking of the rice involves pressing two buttons; one button is literally the power button to turn the damn thing on, and another button lets you select what type of rice you want. If pressing two buttons is considered to be a complicated process, how did he manage to make the blog post?

The advent of fuzzy logic in rice cookers is pretty great, in my opinion; maybe he doesn't get a lot of benefit out of the ability to cook e.g. brown rice or bread or vegetables in his rice cooker, but if he's trying to complain that this device is so so complicated, he should probably post an actual complication that he has trouble with, instead of whining about pressing two clearly labeled buttons.

+1. My rice cooker defaults to white rice, so that's one button press to turn it on and... that's it.

The name of his Web site might be a clue.

An experiment: perhaps microwave cookers. Issue 500 free modified cookers to a suitable target group who might need them, e.g. undergraduates. The modification consists of a simple device that records the settings used each time the microwave is used and uploads the results to a central server each week.

My hypothesis is that the number of programs actually used will be a very small subset of the total available. I know that my microwave oven is mainly used to reheat leftover soup, and occasionally to make porridge in the bowl. Highest power, 3 minutes or 5 minutes, that is that.

The issue is to make the most commonly used settings easily found. Back to UI design again.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674708

Acomjean arrived at a similar place while I wrote this.

the most commonly used settings on this rice cooker ARE the most easily found, though! You press the power button! You press the "White Rice" button if you're cooking white rice; you press the "Brown Rice" button if you're cooking brown rice. This rice cooker demonstrates EXACTLY what you're saying should be done, and yet this man complains.

If you look at the lineup of Aroma (the brand the OP chose) rice cookers, you'll see that the author could have bought a simple one-button model just like his old one, but chose not to.

http://www.aroma-housewares.com/kitchen/appliances/products/...

In terms of whether his cooker will last 25 years, I'm not really sure how good Aroma is as a brand, but most of the Asian people I know (I'm Asian too) buy top end Japanese branded rice cookers like Zojirushi and Panasonic (aka National) -- and these cookers last a really long time. When you eat rice daily or almost daily, spending a little more for reliability is a no-brainer.

The usage patterns I've noticed from watching people use microwaves:

1. Everyone always uses max power 2. Everyone cooks in increments of 30s 3. No other functionality ever gets used because no one knows what it does/implies

Thus a simplistic microwave design would consist of a '+30s' button and a 'Start/Stop' button. This would probably make microwaves much less complicated internally, and thus cheaper and more reliable.

That said, I don't think either of those is part of the design goals of most appliance manufacturers.

I kept waiting for the step that needlessly complex step, it never came. Granted, some things have been overcomplicated due to technology, this rice cooker has not.

I had the same rice cooker that the OP had in the 80s. The one thing the OP neglected to mention was that the pot in that cooker was a non-coated aluminum pot that required some scrubbing to clean vs today's modern non-stick pots.

I don't miss the scrubbing work at all.

It's pretty clear what he's saying. He had a device that had X buttons (one?) and that just worked, and worked for 25 years. Now he has a new device with > X buttons.

Those buttons add some value, but also a lot of potential for failure.

He is saying the added value is not worth the increased risk of failure of the device.

Here is what he says: "The point of this post has been made many times, but I make it again here partly out of sentimentality: simple appliances like my old rice cooker have become complicated by digital technology. In some instances, they’ve been made worse. This is what I encountered in the instruction manual of the newer model we brought home to replace the old one."

And then he proceeds to show the instruction manual, which, again, is written for people who barely understand concepts like "rice" and "inside".

How is the advent of digital technology to blame for the fact that you have to plug the rice cooker in? For the fact that you need to put the rice in the rice cooker? For the fact that you need to add some water, too? For the fact that you need to close the lid of the cooker? For the fact that you need to put the pot of rice inside the cooker BEFORE you close the lid, but AFTER you wash the rice?

edit: I looked at the post again. He barely says anything at all about the fact that this one might break; he mentions it in the very last sentence as a throwaway. He spends a lot of time complaining about how complicated the rice cooker is, describing it as "inscrutable" and "complicated" and complaining that "[he] never had to consult the manual" for his old rice cooker. So no, he's not complaining that the new one will break; he's complaining that pressing the power button and the white rice button in that order is a byzantine process that he can't be expected to understand.

Agreed. He also misses the point - you're not supposed to have to refer to the manual. You probably read it once or twice and if it's well designed, you know how to use it. The manual has to be written for people who have no clue - and it seems to be so in this case. Maybe his complication is thinking too much about what his new cooker can do, as opposed to knowing his old cooker just does one thing only. But if that's the case, don't buy new fangled gadgets! :)

Like microwaves which have about 30 cooking modes now and used to have a power level and a timer.

I wonder if internet of things and google analytics will show what features of appliances people actually use.

Oblig new yorker: http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/No-I-don-t-want-to-play-ch...

My microwave actually crashes and reboots once in a while.

Really!?

I still don't understand why anyone would want a microwave with any controls other than a power and timer wheel. I only see downside like an accidental extra digit causing my leftover pasta to catch fire.

Who designs these things?

I love microwaves where the time is set with a dial, mine broke recently and I couldn't find another one that had a dial (why are they so hard to find?), so I settled for a conventional keypad one. To me it seems counter intuitive but the keypad is much more difficult to use, I get a little irked every time i interact with that thing.

The dials break easily, but they aren't a commoditized part so they're difficult to replace. Number pads are more reliable.

If you eat brown rice every day, a decent induction rice cooker is absolutely worth the money (bonus for GABA mode).

Even for white rice, I find the induction cooker is better. The only difference between the rice cooker my parents have vs. the one I have is that mine has induction, and mine consistently makes perfect rice, while the quality of theirs varies.

I have the same 'new' rice cooker. You have a button to turn it on and a button to launch the cooking. I don't see what's complicated about it.

(The other buttons are for brown rice and delay cooking start. Pretty useful too even if I never use them).

Survivorship Bias. "They don't make'em like they used to" because the ones that broke have been dead and buried for decades, and the few that remain are the only ones to be seen.

*edit: i accidentally selectioned a survivorship in my biases.

Don't know about that. Those National rice cookers that the OP mentions are simple and extremely reliable. My parents, even though they upgraded, still have two of them in storage, and they work to this day. And they've had them as long as I remember, which would put them around 40 years old.

I'm not saying that National Brand aren't good, i'm saying if you were in the store in 1950, you'd see 3 rice cookers on the shelf and mutter that all this new fangled technology always falls apart, and if it were up to you, you'd still just cook rice in a pot, the old fashioned way. Only 20 years later would you realize that your National Brand cooker is solid as a rock.

My point is that the article is talking about the pointlessness and failure prone nature of feature creep, and i'm saying the framing is bs, because the same thing could be said of the National Cooker if it weren't for surviorship bias.

>> i'm saying if you were in the store in 1950,

Well, here's the problem. In his framing, he got his in 1989, which is a different era from 1950. I had an older model (from the 70s) of the same rice cooker handed down to me when I started college, also in 1989. In 1989, these cookers were were already known to be simple and very reliable for a long time.

The framing is actually BS because the company that makes the OP's new rice cooker also makes a simpler rice cooker, that from a functional and esthetic perspective, is almost exactly like the one he replaced. He basically chose to buy the more complex one when a simple one was available, and that's on him, not the technology.

The OP's also being disingenuous when he says his new low end rice cooker won't last as long as his old high end rice cooker. I've had my digital Zojirushi for almost ten years, and I don't think it will have any problem lasting 15 more. The good rice cookers are built to last.

Sometimes simpler is better - his old unit was most likely entirely mechanical and involved an analog thermostat or thermistor and a single button. The new one? has a control panel and a microcontroller/processor.

Things like this are why I got the simplest, most mechanical washer and dryer set that Lowes offered when I moved nine years ago. I didn't want touchscreens or LCDs; I didn't want to have to reboot my W/D if something went wrong. Not a single problem in those nine years, and if something does break, it's going to be a simple mechanical part that's easy to fix.

As the complexity/variability of a product's functionality grows, a product team's ability to ensure quality across all functionality diminishes.

As a consumer of many kinds of things, I almost always gravitate toward the offering that is most simple/focused in its purpose.

I partly agree. I use 2 microwave buttons: popcorn & +1 minute. I kept my old microwave that had 1 dial (since it's half the controls, same machinery) but I can't put it over the stove.

My Vitamix has great controls: a giant power switch, a knob, and a giant maximum power switch. My Kitchenaid is great, too: 2 metal levers and a right-tighty metal-on-metal attachment arm.

It's those flat 'capacitive' buttons that I hate. My fridge has some. Did I press it? I can't feel it in the dark. Did my elbow brush it?

Agreed! Unfortunately these things are giving way to LCD's and the flat buttons, and not just in appliances. Cars are especially guilty of this (switching from knobs and buttons to touchscreens) which require visual attention instead of just feeling around and therefore make them more dangerous. It's an ugly trend that is inconvenient in the kitchen, but could be potentially life-endangering on the roads--I wish more companies would realize that!

Make fun, but I think this is an excellent point about feature creep. If your target market already has a 'good enough' product offering how do you differentiate yourself to get someone to spend more on your equivalent product or buy a replacement for something they already own and works fine.

This does not seem like a optimization by the marketplace towards better products as some economic theories would suggest. Or is it?

You can still get the non-digital kind from Tiger, others.

I think this is not about "complicate", this is about a kind of emotion that author didn't want throw his old rice cooker :)

Compare and contrast with many of the new UX concepts being explored in the web/mobile space...

Even these newfangled digital ones are pretty cheap now.

I love the idea of being able to schedule when to have it cook.

As with anything else, you typically get what you pay for. If you eat rice a lot (i.e., almost every day), you are generally better off spending > $100 for a good rice cooker, like a Zojirushi.

What really separates a good rice cooker from a bad one is how consistently the rice is cooked when you make larger amounts.

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