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Forgive my ignorance, but isn't an old school microwave with knobs and button even more accessible, thanks to tacile feedback? Why do they need to put AI in everything?
It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal rack and the food on top. We’d done this dozens of times before.
I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes”. Later I looked at the logs and Alexa had caught the words “____ at 400° Fahrenheit for twenty minutes” and took this to mean microwave. I’m not sure who specifies temperatures when microwaving, but that’s how it interpreted these very specific instructions. I’d gotten in the habit of being extremely specific because a few times it had tried to microwave when I’d specified bake, and naively thought this specificity would avoid such an issue.
Long story short I was having a nice shower when I smelled smoke, I basically got to live out the Disneyworld Carousel of Progress future scene when the oven went crazy. The metal cook pan embedded itself into the glass somehow and it smelled absolutely awful. We had to throw out the entire thing.
I actually told this story to an Amazon Alexa lead Engineer at a conference in 2021. He said he’d look into it and the microwave disappeared off the market soon after, so I don’t know maybe it was decided it was too dangerous of a product.
Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house on Thanksgiving. It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal rack and the food on top. We’d done this dozens of times before. I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for t…
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't an old school microwave with knobs and button even more accessible, thanks to tacile feedback? Why do they need to put AI in everything?
Anecdotally, the previous tenant of my apartment was blind, and the microwave installed in the kitchen had one of those perfectly flat keypads with no tactile feedback whatsoever. He was able to use it just fine by having some braille labels printed out with a label maker and stuck to the buttons. There was no label on the power setting button, so I assume that, like me, he's just never used it. He also used these br…
At this rate people will buying SortGPT before trying "sort()".
Though some level of natural language interface does seem more immediately accessible. But maybe just having it read the display back to you would be far easier than involving some kind of AI cloud service.
Press time button some times (or hold)
"10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute, etc"
Press power button
"Full power, medium, low defrost"
Start
"Starting: 2 minutes at full power. Press again to cancel"
Bonus points: your house doesn't become instantly inaccessible when the internet doesn't work, or the APIs the device uses are changed, or they "do a Nest". Of course this is a negative point for those hoping to sell you an AI Microwave and an AI Microwave 2 in 2 years time.
Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house on Thanksgiving. It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal rack and the food on top. We’d done this dozens of times before. I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article, it seems there is tactile feedback on the buttons—the author says they aren’t sure which button was the 2 button, implying they could differentiate buttons. Your solution seems strictly worse. If they’re setting the time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time? How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset? They don’t need to put AI into…
> If they’re setting the time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time? A stepped dial would solve this. > How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset? A grid of radio buttons would solve this. It's not like we don't know how to engineer accessible technology. They really do just want to cram AI into everything.
I've used many stepped-dial microwaves, and not a single one of them would be good for blind users. The step often changes size after a certain point and steps are often missed. If you're aiming for six and a half minutes, having to do mental arithmetic or keep careful track is not fun ("12 ticks to reach a minute and then 11 ticks of half minutes, and let's hope it actually got them all").
In my direct experience, the best interfaces for blind users are ones that can have tactile/braille labels applied and ones with voice feedback, in that order.
Interesting to see this here as the more expensive version of this microwave with convection baking nearly burned down my house on Thanksgiving. It was a hectic morning and we were getting ready, and I had my kid put something into the microwave/oven. She put in the metal rack and the food on top. We’d done this dozens of times before. I then used Alexa from another room and said “Alexa, bake at 400° Fahrenheit for t…
I had an over-the-range combination range and have my share of complaints.
I almost never used the the convection function, so there would be a dependable layer of grease build-up.
For the convention or combination functions to work effectively, it needed time to come up to temperature, which meant “pre-heating” the element (and burning off the layer of grease).
The ownership experience was constant maintenance of the element, as well as management of compatible materials for cookware.
It met an untimely death when condensation from a microwave bottle sterilizer left overnight shorted out a door interlock and blew the internal fuse.
In my dazed state of having a baby, it was less of a hassle to replace it with a microwave-only unit than it was to hunt down a fuse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdotally, the previous tenant of my apartment was blind, and the microwave installed in the kitchen had one of those perfectly flat keypads with no tactile feedback whatsoever. He was able to use it just fine by having some braille labels printed out with a label maker and stuck to the buttons. There was no label on the power setting button, so I assume that, like me, he's just never used it. He also used these br…
In general, "lot of XYZ improvements I'd think to reach for before AI" should be the default for most problems. At this rate people will buying SortGPT before trying "sort()". Though some level of natural language interface does seem more immediately accessible. But maybe just having it read the display back to you would be far easier than involving some kind of AI cloud service. Press time button some times (or hold…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article, it seems there is tactile feedback on the buttons—the author says they aren’t sure which button was the 2 button, implying they could differentiate buttons. Your solution seems strictly worse. If they’re setting the time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time? How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset? They don’t need to put AI into…
Popcorn preset? Who uses that? What does it even do? Dont microwave popcorn bags just say 3 minutes at 600W?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the article, it seems there is tactile feedback on the buttons—the author says they aren’t sure which button was the 2 button, implying they could differentiate buttons. Your solution seems strictly worse. If they’re setting the time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time? How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset? They don’t need to put AI into…
> Your solution seems strictly worse. If they’re setting the time with a knob, how do they get 1:35 instead of a guesstimate of the time? How do they change the power level, use the defrost mode, the popcorn preset? They could use knobs with beveled points and with clear beveled icons/text around the knobs? I suppose we should ask visual impired person instead of guessing.
You mean like the one who presumably wrote the linked article that non-blind people are arguing against the suggestion from?