Nobody needs a faster dishwasher – solve real user needs • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by louison11 » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 10:57 PM UTC

barrysteve wrote: post #230

niccl wrote: post #225

These comments seem to make a gloriously meta confirmation of the article's point. The article is saying that engineers (among others) have been known to optimise for the wrong thing. He uses a possibly inappropriate example of faster dishwashers. Then many of the commenters (quite likely engineers) optimise their comments on the thing they know about -- desirability or otherwise of faster dishwashers -- rather than…

Making a faster dishwasher is exactly what engineers are trained to do. They get paid handomsely to optimize and improve existing forms and problems. Sure it's good to say engineers optimize the wrong stuff... but what's the solution? Be someone else? Start the dishwasher again from first principles? I love opening up the discussion with awareness, but a suggestion on the next step is helpful too.

author here. Next steps would be to define with great details what the actual customer needs are, through diligent customer research, and identifying untapped opportunities.

I don’t know if those currently exist for dishwashers. But in general, you’re looking for pain points that have been ignored by the market because nobody has fully grasped the picture of the customer needs before. In that way, frameworks like Jobs-To-Be-Done or customer personas, while they may seem very “mechanical” offer deterministic disciplines to maximize the chances of encountering fresh insights and thus build innovative solutions.

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

#432

Post by klipt » Tue, Mar 07, 2023, 11:11 PM UTC

yunwal wrote: post #413

klipt wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still casual sexism though, because being bad at market research and design isn't an integral feature of being a man. It's like if you said Theranos failed "because it was led by a woman". Which is not to say your wife is an awful person or anything, casual sexism is common and often goes unrecognized. But it's good to call it out when you do see it.

Being bad at anticipating the needs of a woman is an integral feature of being a man. At least, when compared to women. And while this is changing, women still do most of the dish cleaning (at least in the U.S.)

> Being bad at anticipating the needs of a woman is an integral feature of being a man.

No more than being bad at anticipating the needs of a man is an integral feature of being a woman.

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

#433

Post by l0b0 » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 12:43 AM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #281

l0b0 wrote: post #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 figurin…

I generally agree, except for the "Some people need cleaner dishes than others". I can't imagine someone actually accepting "washed" dishes with food stains on them. Either they're clean, or they're not. Presumably you could do a scientific test to figure out the amount of bacteria left, but I assume we're not talking at that level.

> I can't imagine someone actually accepting "washed" dishes with food stains on them.

A charitable reading of my comment would find no such assertion. "Clean" is not binary. A restaurant might get in trouble if 1/100 plates have a smudge on them, but that might be perfectly acceptable in a home. Or not.

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

#434

Post by eru » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 1:23 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #224

eru wrote: 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.

> Most of those Where do you live, and how old are your oldest electronics?

I am saying the ones that immediately go out when the power is cut.

Anything that uses DC would likely have at least some capacitors in them.

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

#435

Post by sgerenser » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

barnabee wrote: post #333

I really dislike this article and fundamentally disagree. Sure, some engineers need to be looking at the problems people have or the products they're trying to buy or whatever, but that's not why I'm here. The goal, especially when starting out, is to: 1. Obsessively understand, improve and optimise everything, knowing that many of the results will not make it into real products or if they do will flop; and 2. Invent…

Reminds me of the (supposed) Henry Ford quote “If I had asked people what they want, they’d have said a faster horse”.

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

#436

Post by zamnos » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 2:23 AM UTC

krageon wrote: post #386

zamnos wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because corporations have giant amounts of resources under their control, and are able to spend hundreds of millions to create something large like Disneyland. I don't know about you, but the resources I have access to don't have anywhere near that level of money.

This is not about Disneyland, it is about a single dishwasher. I don't see how the scope is insurmountable for a single person when that is the subject.

What water pump and heater do you use? do you just grab some lame thing off the shelf that's the same as existing machines (at which point, what's the point of building your own if it's just going to be the same), or do you spec out expensive custom hardware with a custom motor that has bespoke winding arrangement that manages to accomplish what you set out to do? and an induction heater that's exactly right for the expected water for? And then, what do the panels and buttons look like? Is it a Janky looking electrician's special with protruding wires and buttons that aren't suitable outside of industrial use, or do you injection mold buttons that are right?

Okay, fine, none of that adds up to Disneyland money, but we're still talking some 6-figures for this project that may never be recouped. Maybe that's an amount of money that you're able to swallow without a corporation's help. Seems a lot easier with help though.

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

#437

Post by karmakaze » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 4:44 AM UTC

louison11 wrote: post #128

karmakaze wrote: post #126

The truth is that products are made to make money for the business first and meet customer need/wants second. For the dishwasher example, most dishwashers are far too noisy. Unless you live in a large place with many rooms, it will matter. The problem is that quiet isn't a highly visible/marketable and cheaply made feature, so isn't prioritized. After purchase, many would want a quieter dishwasher but very few will b…

Most businesses make money by answering customer needs. I actually believe that when shopping for kitchen appliances recently, dishwashers had a sticker advertising noise levels.

I suppose it depends on the market--inkjet printers isn't one of them[0]. Brother printers however have quite user-friendly policies.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063208

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

#438

Post by eru » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 9:38 AM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #280

eru wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any crap left on the plate will get spread on everything else, so you have to pre-wash everything first. You should really do it at home too, [...] Why? If I have to wash my own dishes, that would defeat the point of a dishwasher..

You don't have to wash the dishes first. Just rinse them under the tap before you put them into the dishwasher. I'm assuming you don't let the dishes pile up before you do that - if you do, you'll get dry dirty plates and 'ware and then yes you would essentially need to wash them by hand. I always rinsed my plates before putting them into the dishwasher (when I had one), it took all of a few seconds. I hate the gunk…

Compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBO8neWw04

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

#439

Post by wizofaus » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 10:03 AM UTC

A dishwasher solving a real problem would be one that was capable of preventing arguments over how best to stack them.

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

#440

Post by yunwal » Wed, Mar 08, 2023, 3:51 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #432

yunwal wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being bad at anticipating the needs of a woman is an integral feature of being a man. At least, when compared to women. And while this is changing, women still do most of the dish cleaning (at least in the U.S.)

> Being bad at anticipating the needs of a woman is an integral feature of being a man. No more than being bad at anticipating the needs of a man is an integral feature of being a woman.

So you agree then