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?
no wonder you are a mac user
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.
FYI, there are shower configurations out there that let you set the water temperature independent of the water pressure. Grohe is one of them.
There are various plumbing fixtures that allow control of water temperature and water flow rate for use in showers, e.g. http://www.bathroom-trends.co.uk/acatalog/Grohe_Wireless_Showers.html
But these fixtures are specialty products that tend to be expensive and finicky to set up. A significant hurdle is the old principle of Garbage-In, Garbage-Out. The taps and shower head have no control over the temperature of the water coming out of the water heater nor of the temperature of the cold water source. As a result there is a surprising amount of complexity required to get water at, for example, 42C to come out of the tap. Happily this problem has been solved but the devices that solve the problem are not common.
Interestingly enough, this problem has a larger usability/safety impact for some populations than the basic hotel shower temperature juggling act that most of us encounter. There are various medical conditions that reduce or eliminate the ability to sense temperature. For people who experience these conditions there is a real risk of causing significant burns if they are dealing with showers that they cannot determine the temperature of the water coming out of the shower head. For these people, traveling exposes them to the random temperature settings and temperature fluctuations that are typical on hotel showers.
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. :)
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.
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.
Joshua
@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!
Showers are a deeply important topic to me. I think I've taken photos of the showers at every hotel I've been at. The only showers I've found I love are in Japan.
Many hotels use circulating hot water that's "always on". And there are instant on (usually gas powered) water heater systems (from Rinnai, http://www.rinnai.us/) that save energy and deliver a continuous water temp. Sadly, the gas in Japan automatically turned off after 3 hours (in case of an earthquake that broke a gas line).
Anywho, I took a photo of the control panel dealie in the shower in Japan. I thought it was a better photo, but I guess not.
http://gallery.mac.com/rosyna/100027/IMG_1381
Oh, these are neat. http://www.powerscontrols.com/pages/products_browse.asp?catId=2190 they automatically adjust cold and hot water flow to maintain a constant temperate irregardless of the method used to heat the water.
Damn right!