Exercise Four-Katie Gale

Love: Apple iPhone 1.14

I am in love with my iPhone. I consider it to be the best cellphone i've ever used. There are countless features that have been included with the iPhone that make it exceptionally easy to use. The way in which you scroll across the screen, for example is just one of the many affordances with the iPhone. You simply slide your finger across the screen in the direction you which to scroll-either up and down, or left to right. When you're at the end of the screen, the screen stays in place indicating there is nothing left to scroll through. The iPhone has great visibility-which is essential to its ease of use-as it is a touch screen phone. It gives great visual, as well as auditory feedback that allow the user to know when a certain function is being performed. For example, when typing on the keyboard, each key 'pressed' makes a typewriter sound, and the character is also magnified to ensure the user knows which button was selected. Without such feedback it would be very difficult to know what had been pressed since there are no physical buttons. The mapping of the screen and all of the buttons is customizable. It allows you to move any of the icons to any position on the screen. Therefor, you can place the ones that you use the most often at the bottom-making them always accessible. This is another great visibility feature as well. iPhone has a number of constraints incorporated into it. For example, when turing it off, you are required to hold down the power button and slide your finger across the screen, which turns red to indicate to the user that power will be switched off, and cannot be confused with any other function. The required combination of these two actions also eliminates the possibility of it turning off accidently in your pocket, bag ect. Once you have used an iPhone and discover all of it's features, it's very clear that a great deal of effort has been put into making all functions intuitive to operate. I could easily ramble on about the other features but this is meant to be a brief post...

Hate: My Radiator Control

I absolutely loath the control which operates my radiator. I look down on it contemptuously. First of all, I didn't even realize it had a function initially. I have two other radiators in my apartment which came on automatically once it became cold outside. They seemingly maintain their own temperature-and I can only presume that once it's warm outside again, they will turn off. When this radiator didn't come on, I assumed that it didn't work, and spent a few weeks  freezing in my apartment. Eventually in my desperation for heat, I decided I was going to turn the dial in hopes that I had nothing to loose. However, I encountered a problem. The dial has poor visibility. In fact, it has none. There is nothing that indicates which way one needs to turn the dial in order to turn on the radiator. There is also nothing to show that it has been turned on. The only way to figure it out is to wait an hour or so and see if it begins to emit heat. There is also no way to gauge what temperature you are setting it to. It has taken me weeks of trial and error in order to maintain a comfortable temperature in my apartment. It has, what I perceive, as counter-intuitive mapping as well. To turn it on, one turns the dial in the counter-clockwise direction, where I seem to have been conditioned that to turn a dial on, it turns clockwise. One affordance given, however,  is that the dial is circular, which is conducive to turning, but that's about the only thing. Considering what a simple device it is, one would expect that it would also be simple to use. It almost seems as though someone had to make an effort to design this apparatus so poorly.