When it comes to product design what we like in terms of how a product will be used and how it’s actually used can be very different. Last week I paid the price for going for wishful thinking rather than facts and the actual use case.
The other week we bought a new litter tray for kitty. The other one was old and stinky and we managed to find one that looked like it would fit the narrow space in our bathroom. It did. Perfectly. The white part surrounding the litter tray slid in, as by magic, next to the toilet and I was really pleased. I’d thought we’d have to try and mold it somehow but there was no need. It was lower than expected, which from the fitting point of view was great, but I also realised that it was likely to cause some problems. And indeed it did.
Kitty’s got a tendency to every now and then raise her bum when she pees. We’d worked around it with the previous one by having a “back wall” that would capture this. In my optimistic mind I’d hoped that the new one would work and that the white surrounding part would be tall enough to capture any spillage. But no. On kitty’s first visit in the new litter tray she raised her bum so much that pretty much everything landed outside and in the end we’ve had to come up with a work around, which so far has been much more messy than the previous solution we had.
If I’d looked at the measures of the white surround before buying the new litter tray I would have realised that it was never going to be tall enough and as a result not work. Though I was really pleased with how well this new litter tray fits, the problems and effort that comes with actually using it far exceeds the visual and physical fit. No mater how well it fits it just doesn’t work.
There is such a thing as emotional design where the aesthetics of a product makes people buy and use it over other products that are less visually pleasing but, if compared, more practical. But the practicality and emotional aspect needs to outweigh the effort and any problems associated with using it. In the case of the litter box it doesn’t.
Tomorrow – Day 308 | Finding a solution & avoiding war
Image: The litter tray fitting perfectly
