A few days ago, I had a contretemps with the shower here at work. I'd got wet and covered in lather, and it then decided to turn itself off, permanently. Leaving me like that.
The usual techy remedy of turning it off and on again had no effect. It was displaying a sign labelled "user protect" -- it was protecting me from getting too clean. I turned it off and waited quite a long time ... still no luck.
I had to wrap myself as best I could and make my way to another shower on another floor of the office building. Fortunately, that one was unoccupied. . . .
Anyway, the user interface of this shower unit is a valuable object lesson in design. It has the following:
- four buttons, labelled start/stop, high, medium, and low
- a large control knob with a red/blue scale round the outside
- coloured lights unlabelled around the left of the outside of the control knob scale
- four other little lights labelled "user protect", "inspect handset", "low flow", and "phased shutdown".
There are no other instructions.
And by the way, all the labels on this thing are in tiny letters, ignoring the fact that people often take off their glasses when in the shower.
I have some questions for you to guess at. I genuinely did not know the answers to these, and really wanted to.
- What do the high/medium/low buttons and the control knob do? (The answer "control the temperature" is not sufficient -- they both affect the temperature -- how do they interact with each other to control the temperature, and why do I need TWO DIFFERENT interacting temperature controls?)
- What am I supposed to do if "low flow" comes on? (I have never seen this happen)
- If I operate the controls "incorrectly", "user protect" mode comes on, and the shower refuses to function at all. (This is what happened to me). How do I reset it? If it takes a certain time to reset itself, how long? And is the clock on that time only "ticking" while the power is still on? Or is it only ticking while the power is off? Or doesn't it matter? HOW DO I GET IT TO COME BACK ON YOU B***TARDS?
- What do the little lights around the outside of the control knob scale tell me? Why do they never seem to come on? Why are they there? Decoration? No, they all flashed just before "user protect" happened....
I subsequently found the answer to question 3 on the web: press and hold in the on/off button, and press and hold in the "low" button at the same time, this will reset it. Obvious really, no need for any instructions on the unit.
