the user experience of a hotel shower
This morning, I found myself in yet another hotel room, staring bleary-eyed at the shower. I'm not a morning person. My brain doesn't begin working until post-shower at the absolute earliest, and often it requires both a shower and a coffee to get anywhere near functional. This means that figuring out the shower in a hotel room is almost beyond my morning mental capacity.
The taps in a shower are a really bad user experience. They're not standardised at all. The taps in this hotel room at the Westin in Bellevue, Washington, are nothing like the taps in a hotel room at the W in San Francisco. Every time I encounter a hotel room, I have to determine how to take a hot (not cold, not burning) shower. The taps don't give me an indication of how to work them. I have to figure out which way to turn them. This is mostly standardised, but not quite, as I discovered in a hotel room a few weeks ago. Then I have to figure out what the range is on the tap. The taps in this particular hotel room have a range of about 25 degrees of rotation, but the Westin in the Boston suburbs that I stayed in a couple of weeks ago on had taps with a range of over 90 degrees of rotation. And then I have to wait for the hot water to appear. Sometimes I think that I've adjusted the shower to the right temperature, hop in, and get scalded a couple of minutes later when the water temperature catches up to where I've unknowingly set it. It's a wonder that I make it out the door of my hotel room alive.
At home, the problem isn't any different, but I'm trained. I know where to set the tap to get a shower of the right temperature for my shower. I've been showering in that particular shower once a day for the past four years, so my pre-shower brain doesn't have to engage to figure out how to set the taps in the morning.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a button near your shower that you could push and it would automatically give you a shower of the right water temperature? My car remembers where I like the seats, why can't my shower remember how hot I like the water to be?
Comments
Anonymous
August 21, 2007
no wonder you are a mac userAnonymous
August 21, 2007
I think you may have (inadvertently?) started a whole series of jokes: "If hotel showers ran Microsoft..." e.g. If hotel showers ran Microsoft Windows Vista, they'd take 10 minutes to warm up, and whenever you changed the settings, they'd take 5 minutes to respond. If you upgraded to a better room, you'd have a better 'Shower Experience Index'. e.g. If hotel showers ran Microsoft Office 2007, they would be absolutely stunningly designed, and absolutely wonderful to use, until you tried to switch them off. You used to know how to switch off a shower, but now it doesn't quite work the same way. After ten minutes of trying to figure it out, you decide it's just easier to leave the shower on all the time. etc.Anonymous
August 21, 2007
FYI, there are shower configurations out there that let you set the water temperature independent of the water pressure. Grohe is one of them.Anonymous
August 21, 2007
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August 21, 2007
I was thinking something similar about the shower fixtures at the Hilton in NYC. Very odd and different than what I've used before. What I think is amazing is how adaptable people are. It's different... people figure it out and move on with their lives. Should we think about software the same way? Can you just design something that's beautiful to use and different from standard, or should you keep standard because you know everyone knows how to use it? It's interesting how our pri's are different here. I judge a shower not by temp, but by water pressure. That said, way too cold doesn't work for me either. :)Anonymous
August 21, 2007
I always thought it would be neat to have a "shower computer" - ie. a display next to the shower where you could hit your name (or picture) and it would set the shower to your desired temperature and pressure. Great for people who have to share (not at the same time!) a shower. A hotel could offer the same except let you set degrees.Anonymous
August 21, 2007
I stayed at a Marriott in DC where they had an interesting shower configuration. The temperature was set at a comfortable level, and the volume was the main lever. This meant that you could quickly turn the shower on and it would be at an ok temperature. JoshuaAnonymous
August 21, 2007
@Brian - Oh, yes, I absolutely agree about water pressure. I hate finding out that the water in my hotel shower just kinda drips out. Low water pressure makes it really hard to wash my hair!Anonymous
August 21, 2007
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August 21, 2007
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August 23, 2007
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