The design of a thermostat used to be a single circle where you could turn the dial to heat or cool. Sometime it evolved to be a square with lots of buttons and to change temperature to heat or cool it takes reading a manual to do. When did the design of this simple device become so complicated? The thermostat controls all of this energy and controls how we feel, warm or cold, so why did we make it so complicated?
Using the thermostat that is electronic can be so confusing to the point that a person will go cold because they can not figure out how to use the device. Why is the thermostat so complex in this day and age? Why did we change what was working for something that many people don’t understand or don’t know how to use? Many older people prefer the simpler thermostat because they can read it, they don’t have to figure out the combination of buttons that will make their house warm or cold and they don’t have to worry about if the heat or ac will be on unnecessarily because they cant figure out how to use the device. It is not only older people that think this way but younger people as well. Why as well get so much more advance with technology do we have to make it so much more confusing or difficult for people?
Society needs to stand up and say we like it how it is! It is not a bad thing to keep things the way they are if people like them or think they work well. People want to change everything so that they have the newest version but this is making it so that we have all this waste because things are not designed to last. Designers need to take a step back and start looking at what works and how we can continue to design for things to last and how we do it sustainably. How we are designing now isn’t working and there are great examples of designs from the past that work and still work to this day.
