May 22nd, 2009, 4 Comments »
I have a small bladder, and often get a drink at the movies. So I’m often presented with the thorny problem of when to go to the bathroom during a film. I think I’m pretty good at picking the best moment, when I’m unlikely to miss any major plot points. Of course, the better the movie, the more difficult it is to choose the right time.
Yesterday James sent me a link to RunPee.com (via Gizmodo). The site is down at the moment–too much attention?–but it apparently promises a very special kind of movie review. RunPee will tell you, as you might have guessed, when you should run to the bathroom and pee. Yet another problem solved by the internet.
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January 13th, 2009, 8 Comments »
Why do we label objects?
- Because they’re new things, and we don’t understand how they work.
- Because the objects’ owners want to add additional information (often promotional in nature) to the object.
- Because they’re not simple enough to operate without additional instructions. When we can’t figure something out, we usually blame ourselves. More often, it’s the designer’s fault.
I think these two examples–from two different public bathrooms–definitely fall in the #3 category. First we’ve got a faucet from UBC Robson Square:
In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says:
BASIN OPERATION
TURN HANDLE IN COUNTERCLOCKWISE DIRECTION
FOR WARM WATER
I’m trying to imagine the circumstances that led to these signs (there’s one behind every faucet). A lot of complaints from frosty-handed MBA students? A lawsuit from a computer science professor with bad circulation? And, for the record, calling a sink a ‘basin’ is so twee.
Next we visit a different bathroom (I forget where) and find this label on the toilet fixture in a stall:
The text is like a little poem:
If sensor is blocked,
use manual flush button.
This unit features
a 3 second flush delay.
This begs all sorts of questions: why would the sensor be blocked? How would I know if it were blocked? And why do I care about the flush delay? Most importantly, why is the flush delay a ‘feature’?
Next we’ve got a tissue box with a spot for a youngster to write his or her name:
This is for really poor kids, who own so few things that their Kleenex box is precious to them.
I’m kidding. Someone pointed out that this is probably for daycares and schools, where each kid has their own tissue box, but it still struck me as a little funny.
Finally, I snapped this photo of a sign on one of the newest ships in BC Ferries’ fleet. I thought the artwork was oddly evocative.
“No High Fives Allowed.” Or maybe “Cylons Only Beyond This Point”?
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June 5th, 2007, 3 Comments »
I really dig nice hotels. I’m a Taurus, and apparently that makes me a sucker for luxury. I like old school hotels, and I like nice post-modern ones, too.
We’re staying at the Novotel Budpaest Danube, a four-star hotel that’s right on the river in Buda, directly across from the Hungarian parliament. In actuality, it’s not a particularly remarkable hotel, but they’ve done it up nice. It’s a very modern, comfortable business hotel, with all the amenities you’d expect. The staff speak good English (certainly not a requirement, but handy) and have been very friendly and helpful.
At first glance, the location looks a little dubious. It’s seemingly central, but most of the cool stuff in Budapest is either up in Buda Castle or across the river in Pest. Happily, the hotel is two minutes away from both the excellent metro system and a tram line. We’re big believers in using public transport when we visit big cities–driving is usually stressful, frustrating and expensive–and so the location has worked really well for us.
I enjoy modern European hotels because they’re often full of cool, tiny design features which I haven’t seen before. I’m not one to peruse House & Home magazine, so these may seem unremarkable to everybody else.
I really dug the anti-steam mirror. I guess the hot water tubes are run behind the central portion of the glass, and it never steams up. I also liked the nifty sink, where the counter just kind of melts smoothly into the basin:
In the toilet room, I enjoyed another playful design element. In many parts of the world, they divide the toilet’s flushing mechanism into two buttons. This is a clever water conservation strategy, as you need less flushing water for, uh, number one than for number two.
In this bathroom, they’ve kind of exploded the scale of the button (which is usually the size of a loonie and embedded in the top of the basin), rendering them as two stainless steel bubbles on the wall. Cool, eh?
This is a great example of how clever designers rethink ordinary things and show them to us in a new way.
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