Thermostatic Unintuitiveness

I wrote about how car thermostats have ruined so many people's understanding of home thermostats.

My friend @MikeyTwo texted me: "My wife doesn't understand thermostats. Maybe my biggest pet peeve."

This got me thinking about how the design decisions of one interface can completely throw off the intuitiveness of other interfaces. 👇

Home thermostats start with a pretty big intuitiveness problem: When you set them to a temperature, air starts blowing or radiators start radiating at a different temperature than the current air. The perceived and actual temperature of the new air can vary widely.

Because you've set the temperature to a specific number immediately prior to the variable-feeling air that comes into the space_, it's totally reasonable to assume that the temperature you've set is relevant to the temperature of this new air.

It isn't.

Allowing for some ramp up/down, HVAC systems are either distributing the hottest or coldest air they can until the temperature reaches the number on the thermostat. Then they stop.

But when it's "really hot," a not-small percentage of people set it "really cold" to compensate.

What ultimately ruined people's understanding of how thermostats work is the car thermostat. Car thermostats have the same controls as a home thermostat, but the blowing air, from inches away, is dialable to the just-right-goldilocks temperature. It's intuitive. It "makes sense."

I don't claim to have the solution to thermostat interface design, but I think it might look a lot more like a progress bar than the current ambient temperature ticking up or down.

70 [🟧🟧🟧——————]

That might help.