Every lamp in a hotel room will have an on/off switch that’s different than the others. It’s a kind of intelligence test — my hand instinctively reaches under the shade for the switch, only to find that it’s on the base, or I’ll paw the entire lamp to discover that the switch is 6 inches down the power cord. Etc. In other words, I am constantly failing some kind of cosmic intelligence test.
In the room I’m in right now, there is:
- a table lamp with a switch on the base that you push in
- a floor lamp with a switch on the floor that you step on
- a table lamp with a switch on the base that you push in multiple times, depending on the intensity of light you want
This is not to mention the lamps spotted previously where you push the switch through the trunk to the other side, or the lamps where you twist clockwise up to 3 times for varying degrees of brightness, or twist once (with no degrees), or the lamps whose on/off switches are on their power cords (requiring either a click or a circular rotation of a wheel or a slow slide). Or the lamps controlled by a wall switch 12 feet across the room.
Could we bring all the world’s lamp experts together, lock them in a room, and force them to make a decision? It’s as though in every car you drove your first mission was to hunt around the interior for the ignition.
Or maybe this lamp diversity is something worth treasuring — a sign of the many forms that human ingenuity can take.
But probably it’s not. So someone call Don Norman.
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In Asia there are many hotels where the control of the lamps has been centralized to a control panel near the bed. You can search on, in, and all around the lamp itself and not find a way to turn it on.
A little off topic: First of all, my husband and I are huge fans of your book and have been trying to get all of our friends to read it…As a human rights lawyer and litigator, I was particularly intrigued by the fascinating study you mentioned regarding how juries behave when presented with “irrelevant” details. But does using a Darth Vader toothbrush really have no bearing on a mother’s qualities? Doesn’t it go to her ability to relate to her son’s interests and empathize with them? Obviously not using it wouldn’t point to unfitness, but doesn’t using it say something positive about the effort she makes as a mom? Just a thouht…
Hi Lila, thanks for the good words. I had exactly the same response that you did about the Darth Vader detail when I first heard it. Two things gave me comfort: (1) The researchers had the subjects evaluate the details based on their relevance to the mother’s fitness. So while you and I felt like it was material, the test subjects didn’t, on average. (2) Perhaps more importantly, the other vivid details in the study struck me as being less symbolic than the Vader one. For instance, in one scenario, the school nurse treats the child’s arm and spills mercurochrome on herself, staining her clothes red.
Haha!
There are studies illustrating the number of hours the average citizen spends stuck in traffic within major metropolitan areas. As a frequent business traveler, I estimate an expenditure of at least 15 minutes annually for myself in the effort of finding the on/off switch for the variety of hotel lamps that adorn my accomodations across my travels. The cost of visual enhancement and energy expenditure mimimization is quite high!
It is funny how I always get frustrated with the light situation in a hotel, but not until you wrote about it did I really see how much it irks me.
Like that newish cell phone commercial about the number of hot dogs in a pack vs. the number of hot dog buns in a pack.
Another anti-example: Remote controls for TV/DVD. I appreciate the diversity angle you mention, but we shouldn’t sacrifice *functionality* to it! I usually have a small # of (say DVD) functions I use. pause, play fast forward/backward, skip forward/backward, etc. These buttons should be special! Larger, together, feel different, etc. Sadly, they’re all packed Chiclet-style…
Oops - I ranted! Sorry.
Enjoying the blog, thank you.