The Gap between 25 Seconds and 5 Seconds - 13 November 2007

Read this article in Chinese (translated by Wei He, English editing by Geoff Falk, Christina Li)

Opening Words

I wanted to write this long before, about frustrating design flaws that exist in our daily life.

Let’s start with “Haier” – I have always quite liked this brand, from the first home refrigerator I bought in the 1990s. The quality of Haier is very reassuring. When I was refurbishing my apartment at 2005, Haier was my first choice for home appliances. Today, Haier’s products are not just confined to the Chinese market, but have also started to develop in the international one. I was a bit concerned with my  purchase choice: perhaps the product quality of domestic brands is not good as some international brands. But considering that Haier has a very famous and excellent after-sales service, and by way of supporting a domestic brand, I bought three Haier air-conditioners - two wall mounted units and a freestanding unit. The design of these three air-conditioners is very simple, and fitted with my flat’s decoration style.  Compared with other domestic brand air-conditioners, Haier is in line with my aesthetic. Even though the price is geared to an international brand, - not in the least bit cheap – I went ahead.

OK, here comes the story of these three air-conditioners. The shipment and installation were very fast. Overall the products appeared to be not too bad, except the panel of the freestanding unit was a bit rough and its fan was not installed properly. A few days later, the wall-mounted unit in the master bedroom could not refrigerate, so I contacted the store and a Haier after-sales engineer came to my apartment to fix this problem.  The engineer came several times and the repeated repairs still could not solve this problem. After trying for three weeks, Haier replaced the unit with a new one. However, the new unit could not be turned on due to panel distortion. Then there were repeated repairs. I got a refund for that air-conditioner after two months, replacing it with a Toshiba air-conditioner in a very disappointed, angry and fatigued mood.

It is worth mentioning that Haier’s after-service hotline has been very enthusiastic in providing their services over the long term, but it does not really solve the problem. Until this year, one year after the refund, Haier has repeatedly called me and asked whether the problem is fixed or not; really cute. As a consumer, I really do not know how to assess Haier’s after-sales service. A famous saying may explain Haier’s predicament: “A really good product doesn’t need after-sale service.”
 

25 Seconds and 5 Seconds

We moved into the new apartment in the winter of 2006. With the everyday activity areas being the living room and master bedroom, the guest room’s wall mounted unit was not used. When the summer came, with the increased frequency of air-conditioner use, I discovered that the wall-mounted unit had a very serious design flaw: this air-conditioner needs 25 seconds to refrigerate, while the equivalent Toshiba unit takes only 5 seconds. 25 seconds is very long time for me when I am sweating all over and looking forward to the cold wind from an air-conditioner. What’s the reason for taking nearly half a minute to refrigerate? The reason is the air outlet in the front is behind two beautiful decorative plates. Therefore, the air-conditioner needs to raise up the two decorative plates before releasing the cold air. More over, the decorative plates rise at a fairly slow rate, and this mechanism extends the refrigeration time accordingly.

-Haier Ari-Conditioner

-Haier

- Toshiba

Another Issue

We slept in the guest room one day. I turned off the lights and tried to fall asleep. After 10 minutes, my wife asked me suddenly why the room lights were so bright and said that she had difficulty falling asleep. I turned to face her and I could not help smiling, - I could still see my wife very clearly after turning off the lights - the whole room was spread with silver-white light. The “Advanced” LCD of Haier’s air-conditioner issued light that was illuminating the whole room. I remembered the LCD function was actually a selling point when the salesperson was persuading us to buy the unit.

I tried to figure out how to shut down the LCD lights. Finally, I found a “Turn On Lights” button in the far right corner of the remote controller. Yes, it was “Turn On Lights”, not “Turn Off Lights”. It was not bad, it still worked after I pushed that button. However, after that, the whole room fell into darkness and there was not one light to show that the air-conditioner was in a running state. I remember the Sharp air-conditioner I used before only used one diode to show three states: Green (working); Yellow (sleep-mode); Red (the filter needs cleaning). It was very simple, even in a totally dark room I still knew if the air conditioner was working properly. This expensive Haier air-conditioner with the “advanced” LCD panel gave me no alternative: I didn’t know the working status if I turned off the LCD; I could not sleep if I turned on the LCD. I had to either bear with the light on or turn it off when sleeping in this room.

-Haier Air-Condition LCD

-Turn Off LCD

-Haier Remote Controller

- “Turn On Light” Button

Conclusion

1. It is my responsibility

If I had not purchased this air-conditioner, it would not have caused so many problems. So what were the reasons why I purchased it? Leaving aside brand reasons, I think that the aesthetic design and the “complex” functions deceived me at first. I hadn’t thought about its use within the environment. If I had spent more time considering the meaning of LCD function in a dark environment and had tested refrigeration time, maybe I would not have purchased it. But how many consumers would consider factors other than appearance and function when they purchase a product?


2. Think of Users

If designers took the perspective of users in the design of air conditioners, perhaps the wait for the cold air would not have been 25 seconds, unless you really think that 25 seconds of waiting time is fun for users. I am sure that the Haier air conditioner had passed many tests during the design process, but I don’t know whether they had tested this machine in a dark room. Maybe they hadn’t thought about it, perhaps producing new products before the coming summer was more important than doing one more test.  Anyway, perhaps the bright LCD does not cause sufficiently great trouble after all, it helps users find things in the dark and they don’t need to turn on the light.

Leaving narrow nationalism and stupid brand superstition aside, I will not answer calls from the after-sales hotline. I really want to buy excellent products in the future. Perhaps this is a personal dream, the only thing I can do is more comprehensively consider my purchase decisions and not be misled by certain factors/functions.

In writing this story, I am not targeting and belittling a certain domestic brand or advocating a certain international brand. I want to use this example to remind designers and domestic brands that users not only mind the appearance of products and prices, and that there are many factors that will change the user’s understanding of the brand. In particular, I should point out that I am disgusted with the after-sales service‘s particular tenderness and use of caring tones. This is not aimed at after-sales staff; it is aimed at the companies’ approach to dealing with those problems.

Zhou Jiong: Senior User Interaction Designer of eBay

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