Design in the Wild: Friendly Low/No Ink Printer
The world is full of good and bad design. For the sake of humanity, I hope most of it is good however sometimes the bad ones tend to stick out a little more. It is relatively easy to pick out the bad designs but today I want to highlight one I think is pretty clever.
Printers, copy machines, and faxes are common appliances in the home or office. They are notorious for being difficult to troubleshoot (a la Office Space). Some manufacturers provide software to help provide useful feedback and help diagnose problems — but that is assuming a lot about the user and his/her environment. Most home printers today are connected via USB and ultimately detected via Plug ‘n Play (if in Windows) and are automagically installed. The vendor software may or may not be installed. If it is, then the user enjoys 3rd party software competing with the operating system’s own handling of the devices. Regardless, they have useful information about their printer available such as improved queue management, fine tuning, and ink level information.
But what if they don’t install it?
Justin’s printer has been running low on ink for a while. Well, let me correct that — the low ink indicator light has been off and on for a while. The printer is a basic home model which prints decent pictures and a few pages of plain text a minute. Color and Black ink cartridges are separate and both are expensive.
Neither of us have anything to print which demands great quality except for the occasional picture, so we are OK with letting the ink run dry before it gets replaced. However our printing habits are not consistent, and we have no idea if both or only one cartridge is low and which color that might be. The vendor software isn’t installed on Justin’s computer so there is no way for us to know what the ink status may be other than ‘low’.
Or is there?
Today the subject of printer ink came up in conversation between myself and Justin, and we wondered which color might be low. We both knew he didn’t have the vendor software installed on his computer which would normally give this kind of information. We went through an anthropological analysis of our printing habits to try and determine which could be low. Finally, he asked “Did you look on the printer?”. Look on the printer? As in it will tell me what is low? I have been using the printer for quite some time, and it is a pretty simple model. As far as I knew, there were no lights or indicators on the cartridges themselves. What was I supposed to do — take them out and shake them?
I heeded Justin’s advice and took a better look at the inside of the printer. When I opened up the hood, the cartridge slid from its resting place in to a position near the center of the printer. I inspected the ink cartridges and lo and behold, there was a little yellow arrow pointing up. I looked up and I noticed the arrow was pointing at a graphic shape imprinted in the case of the printer. It was pointing at an image which depicted the state of the ink cartridge.
Oh my gosh, how freaking cool. There were five pictures separated in to three groups: the left two images were empty color and black cartridges; the center two images were low color and black cartridges; and the right most image was a happy smiling (and full of ink) cartridge. I don’t know how it would do combinations such as one low, one empty, or both empty, but Justin’s printer can tell me how much ink is left in either cartridge, which is a hella lot more useful than an ambiguous indicator light. The best part is that there are no software or operating system requirements, it works regardless.
In a way, it feels silly to be making such a big deal about the design of such a small piece of information. But in all seriousness, how cool is that? These small design considerations are worth so much more to the user experience than crazy features and other whiz bang functionality. This example reminds me how excited El got in Málaga when she saw the little crosswalk dude start running as the time ran out ^_^
I fully agree, its very cool :)
Thanks for that story!
A good article which really struck a cord with me, I always ignore printer warnings/ lights etc telling me t ochange cartridges, drum units etc. It may be an age thing with me but there you are, thatas what i do and we get a lot more print out of cartridges by runningthem until the machine stops , than changing them when asked, or is that told!