what you get when you cross a design degree with a restaurant job
ok, so the glasses that we use for water here in the restaurant? they are really, really stupid.
their stupidity lies in the fact that they are inCredibly bottom heavy, which, on first glance, seems like a feature rather than a bug. i mean, people bump into their water glasses all the time, right? full tables, kids jostling around, food being delivered… why don’t we make the glasses so they never tip over?! what a great idea!!
the trouble is, they never tip over when they are oriented as drinking glasses – with the opening facing up, ready to serve their purpose for the customer. if you turn them the other way, however (say, to put them in the dishwasher, or to carry them on a rack from the dishwasher to the shelf), they act like overly eager dominoes, careening into gaps, knocking into any more stable glasses that lie in their path, and, if possible, diving to the floor just to show how seriously they take that whole gravity business.
this is intensely frustrating.
and did i mention that it’s really stupid? i mean, not only is it annoying and potentially dangerous, but it causes restaurant owners to lose money because of a higher than average number of breakages. and if i am correct in assuming that the glasses were intentionally crafted to be bottom-heavy so that they would tip over less often, then that’s pretty embarrassing, and i should write a letter to oneida explaining what use cases and prototyping could do for them.
trouble is, i don’t really think the people who designed the glasses were stupid. ok, maybe a little bit, but seriously, they meant well. and the people who design the knives, they would have to set a lot of tables and wait for the knives to get beat up a little bit to realize that slightly rounded handles, while attractive when held in the hand, cause the knives to spin on the table if they get just a little bit bent with use, which makes setting a formal table perplexing, as the knives kind of stick together and slant 30 degrees or so as soon as you let go of them, as if a ghost is playing with you to make your job harder. and the people who came up with those table feet that conveniently screw in and out in order to let you accomodate for uneven floors or bent legs, they would have had to do a lot of tests to realize that it’s hard to tell which way
so ok, apart from getting my ranting out of the way, thoughts like these have me thinking quite a bit lately.
[this post was headed in the direction of laying out a participatory design framework that would basically create an idea pipeline for people in jobs like mine at the hollytree (or anywhere) so that the little jolts of inspiration that are lost on the job could be recorded, aggregated, and hopefully acted upon. i got sidelined a bit by the discovery of cambrian house, which aims to do something somewhat similar, but is more web-oriented. i still think this is an idea worth pursuing, but i’m not sure how to fit it in yet. so it joins that club. :) ]