mission.japan

I got the idea for this one just from looking around my kitchen, but if you take some time to look, you can find the Japanese element of simplicity just about anywhere you see technology.

Example the First: The Rice Cooker

The humble rice cooker is to the Japanese kitchen what anchors are to malls—something that’s always there to support the more minor players. After all, if you don’t have a rice cooker, you have to (gasp!) make rice in a pot and watch the time so you don’t over- (or under-) cook it, and then how do you keep it warm, especially if you only have one gas burner to work with (like yours truly). With a rice cooker, all of this fuss turns into:

1. Put in rice.
2. Add water.
3. Close the lid and push the red button.

The rice cooker does all of the mathy stuff like keeping the temperature correct and figuring out when the rice has absorbed all of the water. When it’s done it switches to “warm” mode so the rice is the same an hour after it’s done as it is right when it’s done.

Example the Second: The Hot Water Thermos

Great for tea, hot chocolate, coffee, or anything else that you might need hot water for (if, for example, your kitchen faucet only offers cold water, like yours truly’s). Total steps: 2!

1. Put in water.
2. Close the lid and plug it in.

The Japanese figured out that plugging something in is like an “on/off” switch, so they don’t make you go through the double-confirmation of plugging something in and then pressing an “on” button. To make things easy, the contacts on the plug are magnetized, so getting the plug seated is a snap (literally and figuratively).

Example the Third: The Microwave

The microwave in my apartment, by far, earns the “Gosh that’s so cool why aren’t more things made like this” award. The which-button-do-I-push? number pad found on every American microwave? Gone, in favor of two dials. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the sum of this microwave’s controls is two dials, one for controlling the power (200 or 600 watts), and one for setting the time.

Q. But I need my microwave to tell me the time of day! How can I do that?
A. That’s what clocks are for.

Q. Where’s the popcorn setting?
A. Anything microwaveable in Japan has instructions for various microwave wattages.

Q. How do I use the microwave to time something without actually microwaving anything?
A. Get a kitchen timer. They make those for a reason, you know.

Summary

So in conclusion (another one of those overused phrases that marks the beginning of the concluding paragraphs of 95% of all high school essays), American appliance makers could probably learn a few things from Japan. One of these things being: don’t make your product into a Swiss Army knife. Instead, make it capable of what users want to do 99% of the time, and let the edge cases fall to different markets.