I was having lunch in a nice restaurant in Porto (Corsica) and when I went to the restrooms for a quick stop, I encountered an interesting case of “interaction misalignment”.
The hand dryer that was installed in the toilet was stuffed with paper towels. There was a basket to put the used towels in, but my guess is that it was not clearly visible, so when people wanted to dispose of their used towel, they just put it in the first “basket”-like object that they saw. Once the first person places their towel there, the next person would follow this example...
When seeing this situation, I decided to do a little (social/product) experiment because I was curious if this was just a one time misinterpretation. I did a full “reset” and removed all of the used towels and put them in the basket below the sink. I dried the hand blower a bit and it worked and looked like a dryer agin; at least to me..
I went back to my table, ordered an espresso and waited…
Soon a number of “subjects” returned from the restrooms and after a little while, I went out to have a look…
Same result; again the dryer was full of paper.
My hypothesis is that the black round opening, looks like an opening of a trash can and the position of it (right next to the sink) is easier to locate than the basket below the sink. The basket did already contain a number of towels, so there was an example in place, but it just wasn't visible enough… or perhaps was it the design of the hand dryer itself?
I wonder if the manufacturer JVD encountered this behaviour more often? Their site mentions that one of the features of the design is that it is “100% accessible by people with reduced mobility and small children“. I think this is because the opening for your hands is in the front in stead of the top. The place where the towels were placed during my experiment is called the “drying zone” and it illuminated. Unfortunately did not help the guest of the restaurant to properly use this device.
Is it possibly a cultural mismatch, because tourist are more used to Dyson hand dryers? Or is the combination of offering towels and a hand dryer a bit weird in the first place.
In any case I’m very curious about the product design process that went into this; has this been user tested? Did this behaviour turn up or is it just a weird edge case?
Maybe it’s in the name; JVD calls this model the “EXP’AIR JET AIR”…