Comments on: Musing about design and convenience

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:54:01 +0000

Typical JP! After all your cerebral posts, it’s the mention of a prosaic British plug that puts your comments into overdrive.

In an attempt to bring the discussion back to your original design point, I would add to your conclusion a basic tenet of my philosophy. Namely that if you note when things have inconvenienced or irritated the user and then redesign them, you will achieve a very high user satisfaction.

Don’t ask people what they want, you’ll get far too many answers – just “open-source” their grievances/complaints and you’ll make much quicker progress.

By: Martin Budden

Martin Budden — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:57:10 +0000

@Geoff, from your comment “your fittings are Edison Screw”, I assume you think I am American. I’m not, I’m British. I’m critical of the British plug because I think it is a poor design. There are good British designs and poor ones, it’s important to criticize the poor ones so that we can learn from them.

By: Alan Buxton

Alan Buxton — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:01:33 +0000

I always enjoy going to Shanghai. And similarly enjoy finding an ethernet socket and not needing an adapter for my plug. But …. last time I was there the internet connection via the hotel’s ethernet jack was painfully slow. So slow in fact that I had to go to the office any time I wanted to use the internet. I guess a point is that design is important, but so is functionality.

But perhaps your hotel has a better internet connection than mine did (apparently the ones that route via Hong Kong are better than the ones that route through China’s ISPs).

By: Richard Wilkinson » Blog Archive » Why we carry so much…

Richard Wilkinson » Blog Archive » Why we carry so much… — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:18:31 +0000

[...] Musing about design and convenience [...]

By: Geoff

Geoff — Mon, 26 May 2008 17:07:32 +0000

@FND Good point about the switch. Another point remembering is that the UK is at 240V with respect to earth whereas the USA is 110V. So safety, particular with regard to earthing is a lot more valuable in the UK.
@Martin I thought the light bulbs were more down to the rivalry and probably patents between Edison (Hence your fittings are Edison Screw) whereas here we had Swan and bayonets.

By: FND

FND — Mon, 26 May 2008 16:03:32 +0000

It might be slightly off topic, but this power socket discussion is fascinating!
For the record, I agree with Martin – the British plugs are horrible. (I quite like having a switch on every socket though… )

By: Geoff Jones » Todays browser tabs…

Geoff Jones » Todays browser tabs… — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:50:26 +0000

[...] Musing about design and convenience [...]

By: Martin Budden

Martin Budden — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:13:47 +0000

@Geoff – your last point hits the mark. The UK has often exercised a form of “protectionism by non-standardization”. The small-size golf ball, the BT phone jack, the bayonet light-bulb and the 13-amp plug being examples.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:37:53 +0000

@Martin – The 13amp UK plug was a rationalisation of the old round pin 2A, 5A & 15A plugs that were around in my childhood (The 2A round plug lives on in the bathroom). I think 13A was deemed desirable to the large use of portable electric fires in the UK (Not having centrally heated homes!)
The trip hazard was largely overcome by only having short cables attached to appliances and due to the economies of the ring main system :-) many sockets in each room!
Having our unique design also helped the fortunes of our connector industry eg MK, Crabtree etc

By: Martin Budden

Martin Budden — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:56:22 +0000

@Geoff, you say the UK plug “saves a fortune in wiring costs”. Well there’s two points there: firstly it’s a bad investment decision: you save a capital cost (cost of wiring building) at the expense of an ongoing cost (cost and inconvenience of plugs to all users of the building) and secondly it’s not a fortune but a small saving (especially relative to the overall cost of a building).

On the point of bathroom appliances: the problem with the adopted solution is that it is impossible to use bathroom appliances in regular sockets. A better solution would have been to key the bathroom sockets (and the plugs for bathroom appliances) so that normal appliances could not be plugged into bathroom sockets and so that bathroom appliances could be plugged into normal sockets. For example you could have a protuberance between the holes in the bathroom socket and a corresponding indentation in the plug. Or you could have a raised ridge around the holes in the bathroom socket, so that only plugs of a certain shape could be inserted.

I maintain that the designers of British plugs took a clumsy, brute-force approach to their design, and didn’t think through the wider-ranging impacts of their design. The British plug is ugly, inconvenient and a trip hazard.