Asignment 0- Bad Design

Bad Design- Refrigerator (Hitachi)
Problem- No alarm in the vegetable compartment (center)






User experience and feelings toward the product

The purchaser of the refrigerator was my mother. She bought the product due to its multiple compartments, and most importantly the integrated alarm system which sounds off when a compartment is not properly closed. She perceived the alarm system would allow her to save some money on electrical bill as our family members were caught not shutting the compartments of our old refrigerator once in a while. According to her, the salesperson somewhat highlighted the alarm as one of refrigerator’s unique selling proposition. However, she soon realized the alarm in the vegetable compartment did not work and thought it was faulty. We only came to know that only the top and bottom compartments are equipped with alarm after flipping through the manual. She ended up being somewhat disappointed with the product due to the missing feature.

Lesson learnt from the interaction

She adapted to the inconsistent feature by not depending on the alarm entirely and reminded all our family members to do a double check on the refrigerator compartments after use.

Impression of brand

Despite the disappointment, my mother still finds the brand trustworthy due to its reputation of durability as well as its long existence in producing electrical appliances.

My reflection on the product and user reaction

The product is inconsistent in its design feature. Users will probably expect all the compartments to be equipped with alarm instead of only the top and bottom compartments. Such expectation can come from various aspects including brand familiarity, past experiences, word-of-mouth as well as sales pitch. Despite there was not too much of inconvenience caused in the usage of the product, user dissatisfactory exists when expectations are not met. Hence feature consistency is important in a product design as it determines the pleasure of using the product.

In the case mentioned above, the user’s pleasure of using the product declined as her perceived important feature was inconsistent and she had to adapt by being more cautious. However, we should also not ignore the ability of the brand reputation in the establishment of brand impression. Hitachi’s long existence in producing electrical appliances in this case has accumulated brand loyalty, thus causing less effect to the impression of its brand by an unsatisfied user.