Who needs an electric can-opener?
Last week I mentioned the difficulty of using some kitchen tools and how, if properly improved, appliances and gadgets should be easier for everybody to use, not just the elderly or handicapped.
Most products are designed for people with arms, legs, fingers, eyes and ears that do what they are supposed to do. Anybody who is less than perfect is likely to have varying degrees of trouble using some tools, until it gets to the point where they cannot use them at all without modifications or expensive, specially designed substitutes. A good product should be made, in the first place, so that most of those problems don’t occur, for any of us.
Designers and manufacturers seem to use themselves as the standard for the usability of their products. I suspect most of those people are men around six feet tall; strong, athletic, with 20/20 vision and perfect hearing, and, no doubt, born knowing how to use a Smartphone. This ideal person is probably ambidextrous, can predict the future and does not suffer from arthritis, ingrown toe nails, or allergies. He has no trouble reading the small print or reaching the top shelves, and is comfortable in the passenger seat of a Cadillac. He can raise and lower the window over the kitchen sink without climbing onto a chair, and can tie his shoes while sitting on the edge of the bed. He has never tried to put on a pair of pantyhose.
Those designers should try being portly, 5’2” tall, and over 75 years old for just one week. I bet they’d think about redesigning some of their products.
They would soon discover that those bags of water softener salt are too heavy to cart from the car to the basement without hurting themselves, and that those convenient handles are useless for short people, as the bags drag on the ground. (Oh, we can drag them to the utility room, but who’s going to sweep up all those salt nuggets after the bag gets snagged on the doorjamb and leaves half the load trailing behind?)
They might also figure out why most people who are left-handed, overweight, arthritic, or short don’t regularly fasten their seat belts. And they might find out what it feels like to sit, like a child, with feet dangling in all those “standard” size chairs, restaurant booths, bus and theater seats.
Take something as simple as a can-opener. My mother had a nifty little Daisy model that fit on a folding bracket mounted on the wall. It consisted of a cutting wheel and a rotating gear operated by a crank that clamped the can in place and turned it through the cutter. It had a magnet that lifted the lid away from the food in the can. A similar, portable model soon followed, but it had its drawbacks; The easy-to-operate crank handle was replaced by a twisting handle consisting of two short “wings” that were difficult to turn; with no magnet to hold it, the lid usually ended up buried in the can’s contents; and one was required to hold the clamping handle firmly while turning the cutter, often while the can slid uncontrolled around on the kitchen counter.
Then came an electric version of the same ilk. It hogged the only convenient outlet in the kitchen, was useless during a power failure or on a picnic, and was difficult to clean. I suppose it was the convenient pop-tabs on beverage cans that inspired the pull-off lids now appearing on many canned goods. Because those are not light-weight aluminum cans, the lids are necessarily thicker and tougher and impossible for people with old, arthritic hands to open. I’ve tried levering them off with a knife handle, disaster as the tab separates from the lid and there’s nothing to get hold of. It turns out that such lids are recessed too deeply for the can opener blade to reach. The only solution might be to find that old-fashioned “church key” to open the can the way my grandmother did, by punching little triangles all around the lid. It might be in the back of the junk drawer – if I’m lucky.