I love design. I think design is making our world a better and prettier place. Common things are becoming more beautiful every day and design is making our interaction with the world more care free. Many things that used to be complicated and ugly are now easy to use & attractive. There is one notable exception however, faucets. Faucets (or taps if you will) used to be simple. Now faucets suck.
There used to be just one type of spouty thing where the water came out accompanied by a hot and cold tap. They were pretty much universal, and more importantly worked universally. Want water? Turn a tap. You want more cold water? Turn the cold water tap. Want more warm water? Turn the warm water tap.
First these Grohe things started appearing everywhere. With one handle you could adjust the water pressure by moving it upward or adjust the temperature by moving it horizontally. This was fine.
But then, all these different design faucets started conquering the world. They annoy me. They annoy me a lot. I recently spent 30 seconds frantically waving my hand in front of a faucet in a hotel to get the water to work only to find out that it was not an infrared faucet. Instead a minuscule pylon that looked ornamental was meant to regulate water flow. Dozens of times I’ve stared perplexed at some shiny chrome design protrusion while my hands are lathered in soap and my mind draws a complete blank on how to operate the thing in front of me. Design faucets are beautiful but in their path towards resembling alien artifacts, Terminator parts and the shiniest things in the world have made themselves too complicated to be used consistently.
You have infrared ones, you have push button ones, there are levers that go up and down, levers that go in all sorts of directions, knobs to turn, knobs to push back, dials to turn, dials to turn counterclockwise, levers to rotate, buttons to rotate etc.
I know designers want to make useful and beautiful things but faucets have turned into an exercise in pure form that in my mind makes them less useful overall as devices that easily deliver water to the user. So, designers please make faucets simple again.
So apart from the inconvenience, why does the unnecessary complexity of faucets vex me so? Aren’t I just a tad too young for what could be construed as a “get off my lawn” blog post? When faucets became high end design items their designers were given design freedom. 3D printing will give that same level of freedom to many different designers and evermore products. I’m hoping that designers use this freedom wisely to make beautiful, useful and easy to use things. I worry however that it might also be an opportunity for design to make more things that suck.
Images used under Creative Commons, Attribution: Samirluther, Orcmid, Kalleboo, Charles & Hudson, Charles & Hudson, Charles & Hudson & HighFitHome
You’re not alone. I too miss the good ol’ days when you didn’t need an instruction manual to figure out how to get water out of the wall.
Also, some of these are a nightmare to try to keep clean. Maybe that’s the point – if you can’t figure out how to use them, they never get dirty, you don’t have to clean.
Nick,
Thank you so much for that! I didn’t even consider how difficult these things are to clean.
I fear the showers everytime I book into a new hotel
There’s this club in London, called Chinawhite, where the faucet water comes from a ceiling of stones (its asian theme, stones are asian – apparently) – its infrared but because its all leaking through the rocks – you get just enough to clean maybe one hand…try having drunk British girl figure that one out.
saw this blog just recently … anyway… apart from the particular faucet case, yes, I agree and I’m wondering how many unnecessary, ridiculous and obsolete design products will emerge with more massive 3D printing .. who knows
Don Norman, who wrote a book called The Psychology of Everyday Things (now retitled the Design of Everyday Things) would really applaud you. http://www.jnd.org/ is his site.