It's a Crock of Something…

My wife and I got a slow cooker by West Bend for our wedding 5 years ago. We did a lot of research on models and reviews and finally settled on this one based on superior customer ratings, versatility, and overall performance.

We haven'tused it much, and one of the reasons was the lack of success we had when we tried. Slow cooking certainly doesn't sound like rocket science—get some meat, season it, stick it in a pot and let it cook for 9 hours, right?

Recently we came across an explanation for our past failures: I didn't read the manual. By this point you're probably saying "we'll what did you expect?" and my answer to you is this: For a device with a single 5-option dial, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to be able to operate it at a basic level without reading the instructions. I'm a firm believer that whenever possible, instructions should be used as a fallback—if something isn't clear, then you read the instructions—but should almost never be a requirement for use, and you should never create a situation where something that looks like it operates in one way actually operates in a very different way. Regardless your beliefs on whether most people do or do not read instructions, I can pretty much guarantee that nobody WANTS to have to read the instructions. Back to the point at hand.

As I said, the crock pot has a dial numbered 1-5. Before you read any further, what would you assume those numbers mean?

If you're like me, you might assume that they refer to heat levels: 1 probably being the coolest and 5 most likely the hottest. But if you read the instructions, which I did much later, you would learn that numbers 1 and 2 are to be used only for warming, and never for cooking. Numbers 3-5 are used for cooking—3 is low, 4 is medium, and 5 is high. What?

Not only is the interface an absolute atrocity and horribly misleading, what's with the notch marks between the 1 and 2? Or between the 2 and 3? For a device with a single dial, it takes a fuck-up of monumental proportions to get something like this so wrong.

I'll concede that many things probably can not be practically operated without manuals—a car is a great example. But there's no reason that West Bend couldn't have indicated SOME type of difference between the notch marks; something that would have at the very least indicated that there are 2 warming settings and 3 heating settings. The numbers might have been written in hieroglyphics instead. In fact, HAD the numbers been written in hieroglyphics, their intent would have actually been clearer because there would be no pre-existing associations, and it would have made the device practically inoperable without reading the instructions.*

So if the usability of your product can be improved by replacing language elements with hieroglyphics, please stop what you're doing and get some help.

*Note to designers: this is not an endorsement of the use of unintelligible code in your products; I'm merely using this as an example to illustrate your colossal failure.