A Toaster Should Never Be Hard to Use

The hotel I stayed at this week set a toaster out so visitors could have hot, toasty bread products. Bagels were popular with guests so I spent some time observing the bagel toasting process.

For many people, first time use was tricky. While the design appears simple and easy to use, the order of operations is unintuitive and some procedures not apparent.


I observed toaster users place their bagel pieces in the toaster with success - so a point goes to Krups for using a traditional, well-established method for dropping bread items into a slot. Setting the toast level was easy, though I have not determined if that dial affects bagels or just bread.

The next set of steps were the main problem points. Users commonly would adjust the larger knob slightly to the right and step back to wait for their bagel to toast. The first time I noticed this was when I also wanted to toast a bagel. After observing someone walk through these steps, I imitated the process and waited. After a couple of minutes, I peered in the toaster and realized it wasn't hot.

I then noticed the bagel button (unlit), pressed it and wondered if the toaster was now on. The person I had followed realized the large lever needed to be all the way to the right (or perhaps just surmised this as, coincidentally, the toaster warmed up).

Then there was a wait. This toaster takes a long time to heat bagels.

I observed that with this task, other users are a lot like me. They are impatient and want to remove the bagel before it has finished toasting. This could be the human quality of curiosity - is my bagel done, is it toasted enough, is it burning? But it could also be that breakfast is often a fast-paced, grab-and-go meal. Time's wasting as the bagel keeps toasting. Slightly warm is good enough.

Invariably, with the users I watched, the large knob was the attention-grabber. However, moving the knob to the left didn't seem to actually stop the toaster or fully eject the bagel.

It took a couple of tries and a lot of staring. The blue STOP button doesn't actually fit the user's perception of the task.

So what's going on here?

I have several hypotheses:

1. There is no clear order to the knobs and buttons
2. The bagel button doesn't catch the user's attention
3. In relation to #2, the user must press a button to start the toaster
4. The user must press a button to stop the toaster
5. If the user must press stop, there should be a start
6. Even with the icons for the large knob, it is unclear how to use it
7. Buttons don't belong on a toaster

I am not going to get into all the possibilities of resolving these and other problems. The ideal design might tell the user how much time remains or auto-detect a bagel vs. a slice of bread but I'm not going for ideal. I'm going for improved.

My redesign idea is to remove the buttons, use a more traditional bread depressing lever, and to ideally prevent the user from having no toasting results once the lever is depressed.


Some sort of widget, as of yet undetermined, would allow the user to flip between bread and bagel. There would be no "off" for either of these. One or the other, but definitely not nothing. For people who commonly toast bagels, they can just leave it flipped to that side and never have to press a bagel button.

Below the bagel toggle would be a light/dark widget. The one on the Krups toaster worked fine, but I would still want to experiment with other options to see which is easiest for a variety of users.

The "my bagel is inserted" lever (I have no idea what this is called) is vertical, matching what happens to the item you have inserted - it goes down.

Toasters should be easy and simple to accommodate the short amount of time a user should spend with it. It should blend with daily life, not stand out, or require instructions to use them.

Related posts:
The Experience of Product Packaging
Making Exercise a Good Experience
Dining With Dignity