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Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs

louison.substack.com

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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are different, and that's OK :) Some people have 1-2 really close friends, others have 20 friends that they are not that close with but still close enough to meet every week for dinner, but if you want someone to help you hide a body when you accidentally killed someone, you're probably better off with 1-2 really close friends. And also, you can invite anyone over for dinner, that's sometimes how you make acqu…

Well until this as-of-yet unknown person turns you into a body. I don't have friends.

> Well until this as-of-yet unknown person turns you into a body.

Most people won't :) I've probably met 100s of people and invited them home at one point or another, and worst thing I've experienced is rude, stupid, dumb, clumsy people, or a combination of some/all of those traits. No one is perfect though, including ourselves, so most people come with one or two traits you won't like, but don't let that stop you.

> I don't have friends.

Then head out and make some! Even introverts can make friends, although it is a bit harder for us, I guess.

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

#342
> Businesses exist to make money by serving customer needs

this is both correct and inadequate as a principle. Leaving aside the excessive focus on money and the convenient blindness around externalities, customer needs are not static but evolving. What fraction of today's customer "needs" existed 10, 100, 1000 years ago?

Needs are shaped in collective feedback loops that identify and match "desirable" new facets of consumption with deliverable technologies. That non-linear game is much more complex than identifying and serving true customer needs.

While physical tech (hardware) places real world constraints on what can be created (popular culture has a flying car "need" but they are not deliverable), software has almost no such constraints. It is closer to the business nature of movie making or book writing. You use information and code to create an almost entirely pure cultural artifact.

That is why people engage in "faster dishwashers". While it is hard to read the mood of the times and engineer a blockbuster movie, it is much easier to work on a more predictably successful sequel. Of course at some point people tire of sequels.

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

#343

I would love a faster dishwasher -- not because I need the dishes washed faster, but becuase I live in an open-plan flat with the kitchen and living room in the same space, and anything to reduce how long I have the dishwasher churning away would be wonderful. Fortuanately, I tend to get away with a 30-min wash for most days, but someone please invent a 10-minute dishwasher please :)

Dishwashers in commercial kitchens are rapid, much less than 10 mins. I have always wondered why, exactly, we can't have that at home. A dishwasher so fast that it's done while you're still clearing up from dinner and you can put stuff away immediately would be fantastic and is clearly absolutely possible.

> I have always wondered why, exactly, we can't have that at home.

You can. It’s just way less efficient, way noisier, and way more expensive. A Hobart conveyor dishwasher has a cycle time south of 3mn (and throughput of 3 racks/mn, with conveyor speeds reaching 6ft/mn). But it’d probably take most of your kitchen and blow up your electric panel (they need an exclusive 208V 3-phase, and if you plonk for the booster heater that’s a separate supply of the same).

It might also be less reliable, as it won’t really have the occasion to get up to spec (like only running a car for a few miles at a time and never getting it to temp before stopping).

Home dishwashers are designed to work with essentially random inputs (with acceptable results), work very efficiently, and last for long at relatively middling loads / cycling. The middle one is an especially big factor, modern home dishwashers use very little water and less power, so e.g. they’ll often cycle between top and bottom racks rather than have the water and power to run both.

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

#344

My dishwasher has a beeper for when it’s done like a microwave. It drives me up a wall!! I don’t care when dishes are done, I don’t need to attend to them urgently. They can sit there clean until I’m ready for them. There is no way to disable this beeper and it goes off every minute after the cycle is complete. Thank god the dishwasher has a wall switch to the circuit so I can just kill it but oh man. Never buying Bo…

Conversely, a washing machine should have a beeper, as you need to take it out kind of urgently. But my Bosch washing machine lacks this.

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

#345
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I often also do parties, where I cook for 20-ish people, and often have 3-4 dishwasher loads after a party. Speed does matter some. Where it matters a lot more is that I live in an condo where officially I'm not supposed to run my dishwasher after 10:00 p.m. The difference between 1 or 3 hours is significant there for running it after dinner. (I basically only run it after 10:00 p.m. after parties; got a very q…

Good lord. I don’t even know 20 people… at least not well enough to have them over for dinner.

You don't need 20. We ran three dishwasher loads for only eight people recently, with simple cooking. One at the start of preparations so it would be empty and we'd avoid a queue of dirty pots in the kitchen, one when the dishwasher filled up during the evening, and another at the end. To my mind, four loads for 20 people sounds low.

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

#346
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to run after 10 would be a pain. I guess with a timer it could run in the morning and work from home means the day could work. Totally stops using cheaper energy at night too.

Imagine if it leaks? Or anything else goes wrong? I've never heard of a dishwasher so loud it couldn't be run any time.

> Imagine if it leaks? Or anything else goes wrong?

I’ve never remained next to a dishwasher for the entire time in order to baby it in case of trouble, have you?

Plus a modern dishwasher uses less than 4 gal water for the entire cycle, there’s likely less than 2 gal in it at any one time.

> I've never heard of a dishwasher so loud it couldn't be run any time.

Then either you’ve never lived in an apartment building or you’re deaf. As a sufferer of chronic insomnia, 11pm dishwashers are a bane (though less so than midnight washing machines).

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also telling how thin the walls are where you live. I live in an old house with an old and fairly loud dishwasher. One door closed and there are no vibrations or noise problem. Can a dishwasher really become a noise problem?

Probably floors more than walls, contact points with both, and not so much "thin / thick" but "does this transmit the vibration". Like subwoofers on the ground, it changes how the sound carries.

Exactly. It’s about how well (or how poorly) the superstructure dampens (or transmits) vibrations.

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

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

I love how you just gloss over 'solid reasoning' and 'still available in commercial soaps'. If it's bad enough to be taken out of residential use it should be taken out of commercial use. There should not be separate classes of what people are allowed to do in America. Things like this previously drove me to be an a*hole libertarian out of frustration.

[deleted]

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial kitchen ones, one single tray load, washed in 120s, comes out hot as fire so they air dry quick.

I haven't worked in a kitchen in thirty years, and I can still recall the feel of my skin after even a half shift of working next to one of those dish cleaners. As envious as I am of their speed, I'm absolutely sure I don't want to reproduce that sensation at home.

Also not sure my home dishes would cope with the rapid heating and cooling, I’m pretty sure my plates are not designed to thermal cycles that quickly, to say nothing of the glasses.

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

#350

Ok, so everybody wants a faster dishwasher and nobody wants to discuss the article. Fine with me, so I can add my 2 cents: In Germany, dishwashers (and washing machines, but let’s not go there) fall into two categories, either Miele or everything else. Miele has amazing quality, so it feels like the dishwasher might outlive you. Mine has a „quick power wash“ programme that takes about an hour and gets the job done, b…

Swiss V-ZUG makes good appliances as well.
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