ux-portfolio-WCHunt

How Do You Like Your Toast?

William Hunt - 3/10/20223

I often enjoy having a simple breakfast in the mornings, especially if I can bundle all the food together and eat while on the move. The staple food that I use to make this as efficient as possible is toast. My personal preference for toast is when the bread is slightly crispy and the crust isn’t completely blackened, and I assume that most people might agree. This was never an issue I had until we got a brand new toaster my girlfriend had to have.

We used to have a Black & Decker toaster oven similar to the picture below (picture taken from walmart).I liked this model of toaster since I found it fairly straightforward to use. I would pull out the metal tray that sat on the racks inside the toaster oven, set my toast on it, then place the tray back onto the rack inside the toaster oven and close the door. Next, I would turn the knob to the image of the half-black, half-clear sticker to set the timer for my desired toast shade. This was a matching between the system and real world, a usability heuristic guideline, that allows a user to understand the expected outcome of using a product in a specific manner. As the toaster oven toasted my bread, I could look through the front glass door to check if my toast was getting too burnt or if I needed to adjust the time for a crispier, crunchier result. I assumed that the new toaster would be similar, but that turned out to be wrong.

The new toaster we got is a Beautiful 2 slice toaster by Drew Barrymore. It’s a touch screen toaster and takes up less room than my previous toaster oven. Overall, The new toaster (pictured below) has an aesthetic and minimalist design, which is another of the usability heuristics, in that the design is slick, and the buttons only serve the purpose of providing a way to our desired outcome, without taking away from what we need to know to operate this toaster. When I want to toast a slice of bread I put the bread into the slots on the top, but beofre I pull the handle down to start toasting I check the settings. As I’ve experimented with this toaster I usually have it set to 3 bars, then I pull the handle down to start the toasting. Usually the 3 bars isn’t enough and after the toaster’s timer dinges and shoots out the toast I change the settings to 1 bar and then pull the handle to let the toast cook some more. This usually turns out to burn the toast and if I move the initial setting to 4 bars instead my toast will be blackened when it pops up. The issue I have with this toaster is that unlike the toaster oven the only way to adjust the timing is by pressing the + or - buttons. The light goes up to seven bars and then you have to pull the handle down to start toasting your food. The other issue I have, although rather minor, is that I have to double check that the settings haven’t been altered between uses, as my girlfriend likes her toast and bagel’s crispy. A solution I thought of that could solve the problems I have with this toaster is that they simply add another button to the toaster for a user’s preset or just have a toast button that would adjust the timing. This would also allow for there to be an even number of buttons on each side of the touch screen.