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Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

louison.substack.com

141–150 of 445 posts

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#141

Dishwasher cycles have been getting longer and longer and it’s a pain in the neck. Give me back my hour long cycle and actually clean dishes, please.

You can blame detergent regulations for this. About a decade or so back phosphates were banned from detergents. The problem is that was the thing that made them work really well. In order to compensate for less effective detergents, cycle times have gotten longer. Phosphate detergents are still available in commercial soaps, but I don't recommend skirting the regs here as they had some solid reasoning (algae blooms).…

Funnily, if you ask around outside America, you'll get the opposite advice: a cold water connection gives better cleaning, because starch and protein do not coagulate in the initial rinse[0]. I suppose conventional wisdom only serves the status quo. Which effect is actually greater? Have yet to find a scientific test.

[0] Compare what you find with

  dishwasher hot water site:reddit.com
  dishwasher hot water site:forums.whirlpool.net.au
  spülmaschine warmwasser forum
PS: dishwashers with condensation drying cool the tub with water for the next run stored in a tank beside it. This is probably why European brands have a reputation of not drying in the US.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#142
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically the same for all Bosch models

I see, I thought there were tens of different models with different features/interfaces/settings/whatever. At least then Bosch is coherent.

I'm sure you are sarcastic here, because I have 4 (four) Bosch kitchen devices which might look similar (a rotating button with little displays left and right) but function WILDLY different - emphasis mine. On one the rotating button can be pushed, the displays are touch sensitive except on one, on one two increment by the touch displays not by rotating, on one the settings are reached by long pressing the info area, menus are a jungle different every time and can be reached by touch controls OR rotating the button... No, Bosch has zero coherence (just in design ok). And don't start me on the sound signals like the stove complaining it got a drop of water on its sensitive touch buttons placed right next to the pot. I'm sorry but I'm 110% behind the OC, no Bosch decision maker EVER used those appliances.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty certain that's not an engineer's feature but rather the great idea of a product manager answering to marketing concerns wanting to make the product more "human" or some shit like that. The engineer sighed, implemented the thing, kept his job and moved on. BTW, my Samsung _played a 30 second song_ (loudly beeping) when it was done. I think it was Schubert or something? And again, no documented way to shut i…

It was possible to disable it on mine with the Smart things app. You can even tell it to send a push notification instead. I absolutely hated the sound but loved the notification as it will remind me and I would just dismiss it when I did it.

This feels like it's just nagging you to install the app and hook it up to wifi. I've worked for $big_appliance_company and let me tell you... You don't want to connect your appliances to the Internet.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#144
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your children, if you have any, should make for rather efficient dishwashers at no additional cost if you play it smart.

There is an opportunity cost. Time spent washing dishes means time not doing something more productive.

That is precisely why you should let your $0/hr spawn pick up this menial task rather than doing it yourself - assuming your time is worth more than theirs, obviously :)

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#145
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your children, if you have any, should make for rather efficient dishwashers at no additional cost if you play it smart.

Except for the drastically increased amount of water usage. The cost is negligible to run the dishwasher compared to the additional hot water usage.

That is a fair point, although I wonder how long this will hold true considering the ever increasing prevalence of heatpumps, sun-boilers, and other such equipment.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#146

This is a fantastic analogy for something which has bothered me for years! One example which comes to mind is pushback received on a pull request for a cron job. This script did some heavy lifting so it took a few minutes to run. The reviewer suggested all sorts of minor optimizations so a script which runs once per week in the middle of the night with no one waiting on it could run tens of seconds faster. A complete…

Glad you liked the analogy! Yes, keeping this in mind is useful for developers, not just product people. It's tempting to fix or automate things that don't need it. I think there is a meme that goes "I could have done this in 2 minutes, but I chose to spend 2 days automating it instead." Sums it all up :-)

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#147
There are market opportunities at all axes:

- Some people genuinely need a faster dishwasher, because having clean dishes in a timely fashion is important.

- Some people need cleaner dishes than others. Cleanliness isn't binary.

- Some people need a more energy efficient dishwasher.

- Some people need a smaller/bigger/more corrosion-resistant/quiet/heavy duty/etc. dishwasher than the market norm.

The trick is figuring out which of these axes have a high ROI.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was possible to disable it on mine with the Smart things app. You can even tell it to send a push notification instead. I absolutely hated the sound but loved the notification as it will remind me and I would just dismiss it when I did it.

This feels like it's just nagging you to install the app and hook it up to wifi. I've worked for $big_appliance_company and let me tell you... You don't want to connect your appliances to the Internet.

Well… what I want to sleep. Worse case scenario is my washing machine ends up DDOS’ing a poor guy’s website

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to clean that stuff out of your dish washer otherwise.

Not really. It’s ground up and goes down the drain with the waste water. The Technology Connections YouTube channel has some nice, in-depth looks at dishwashers and soap.

> Not really. It’s ground up and goes down the drain with the waste water.

It depends. What you describe is common with American dishwashers. European dishwashers typically don't grind anything up, they just collect it in a sieve.

Re: Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

#150
post #86
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a clock that shuts off when the power is cut, you don't need to worry about drifting: Most of those are synchronized to the grid, and the grid keeps time really, really well. They actually synchronize the grid to atomic clocks etc for that purpose.

I have clocks in various mains powered devices that will drift noticeably over a couple of months. Some survive small brownouts, some don't, I have one which will last for a decent length cut. I'd wager all of them get timing from an internal oscilator driven by a low-voltage DC supply and have no mains frequency or voltage anywhere near them.

I guess, if they survive any power cut at all, they are probably not taking their time cues from the main's frequency. I agree with your wager that they probably run on low-voltage DC and perhaps have a capacitor somewhere to bridge short outages.

Where do you live that you have frequent enough brown outs to notice these things?

I have a time switch. It looks entirely mechanical, but I suspect it gets its time signal from the mains: it doesn't seem to drift at all. If there's ever a power outage (which happens from time to time when our breaker trips, not because the real mains is down) it just stops advancing the time, but doesn't reset, because it's all mechanical.

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