I'm reminded of a discussion we had here a few weeks ago, where somebody noted that humanity wouldn't be able to invent, for example, a machine to automatically rack pins at a bowling alley today.
The 2018 solution to that problem would automatically involve computer vision, AI and robotics. The idea that one could construct a giant mechanical device the size of an entire bowling lane that is purpose built to lift, sweep, collect, rack, and place pins with no capacity for customization whatsoever wouldn't even occur to today's generation of engineers.
You can see it happening in some of the comments here.
You're talking to software engineers here. Equating 'humanity' to us on Hacker News forgets about all of the mechanical engineers who would do a great job of racking those pins.
Both observations have equal validity for middle-/upper-class denizens whom can spend money on increasing entropy much faster. Go to anywhere remote and/or poor, and the better-to-do outsiders will be gobsmacked by inventiveness that, to the local, will seem mundane and vital. For example, one of my great-grandfathers made a continously self-cleaning oil-filter for farm equipment... the sort of thing corporations clearly wouldn’t offer for monetized consumables reasons.
Ah, so the sisal rope is just a simple filter, and not a "continuously self-cleaning" filter? I presume it's eventually fouled and must be disgarded? So this must not have been to which the ancestor was originally referring.
Over time the idea of what "computing can do" has evolved to a point that now a days it is even used to "implement the behaviour of a mechanical system" rather than just being a tool to do data processing. The problem of building the mechanical system basically boils down to what all components and what all connections between the components are required to achieve the desired behaviour. This would be what a mechanical engineer would think about. A software engineer on the other hand would think about the components required and the algorithm that would control the components to achieve the desired behaviour. Both approaches have their pros and cons but as the desired behaviour get more and more complex, the algorithmic approach tends to be more simple and feasible.
There was talk on ha hackaday the other day about converting a windshield-wiper motor to a servo with additional components, and another user commented that the newer wiper motors are servos that have a built-in CAN bus and no mechanical linkages.
And if you've ever had a mechanical linkage fail, or noticed that wiper linkages only work for certain geometries, you appreciate the reliability and versatility that comes from having separate motors.
Also, one wiper arm can be completely jammed or disabled and the other still works, where a mechanical linkage would be down for the count.
Cost will come down. Power windows used to be a luxury item too, now they're ubiquitous because the hand-crank mechanism is not only more expensive to produce, it also placed constraints on door panel styling, and having a single door design is cheaper overall.
When the hood and windshield don't have to accommodate a wiper linkage, engine packaging gets easier, allowing designs that could be safer, cheaper, more efficient, more reliable, or some combination thereof.
These are built for a reason. CANbus means they share the wires with lots of other components. Wiring and the complexity in the other end of that wire have a cost too.
and theoretically a computer-driven windshield wiper would be able to respond to weather conditions better than a purely mechanical one, improving safety (perhaps marginally, but that's ok by me). I really appreciate my auto-rain-sensing windshield wipers.
As I said complex behaviour would benefit from computing. I don't see car wipers having complex behaviour that they would need computing to implement it. Also the complexity of the behaviour is a spectrum and not just a on or off thing. You need to consider all the various properties to figure out the best balance in the solution you come up with. On the industry side of things, companies will fit everything with computer and sell it at higher cost coz thats what their goal is i.e to make more and more money, they don't care about the best solution, all they care about is how they can sell expensive solutions and use proper advertisement to portray their solution as the best one (even though it is not).
Many modern cars are equipped with rain sensors that auto adjust the speed and frequency of the wipers, and they seamlessly move from one setting to the other instead of having distinct steps or settings like wipers of old.
I can see why a programmable wiper motor is useful that scenario; send the speed and frequency as arguments and have the motor adjust on the fly.
It's probably not about the complexity of the wipers, it's about the complexity of the wiring system. By putting everything on a bus you only need to run one set of wires around the entire car, rather than individual control wires to each gizmo.
I think this is a bit of a unique case because we're assuming up front that we know how the problem would be framed.
In 2018, it would be odd to see a problem like this where people want pins shaped exactly the same way to be set up exactly the same way and that determine success for decades and decades. If (somehow, out of context) someone asked me for such a machine, I'd immediately be asking why not a different (or random) arrangement for a tougher challenge? Or for training? What about skinnier or fatter pins to control difficulty a little?
Those things only seem strange now because we're all accustomed to bowling being played exactly the same way our entire lives. If it were invented in 2018, I don't think it would look the same.
You'd almost be irresponsible as a software engineer to have someone explain what a bowling pin-setting machine should do, and then build it to do exactly (and only) that. For anything other than "bowling, exactly as specified," you'd be over-engineering an exact-fit solution only for your competitors to build something better and more extensible (with more bowling features / challenges) in six months.
Today's generation of software engineers maybe, but thankfully humanity is a lot bigger than that. There are huge numbers of engineers who come up with practical non-digital solutions; take a look at farming or manufacturing equipment.
Have today's engineers somehow stopped believing that the simpler thing is the most useful? Or is it that writing some code to glue together off-the-shelf parts is cheaper and easier than designing and manufacturing a giant machine?
One point is that pushing software into products gives companies more control and power.
* The software can collect data about the user.
* The software can prevent repairability by the user.
* The software can enforce obsolenscence (see the absurdity of smart TVs: an expensive display that can last for 20 years bundled with a super cheap computer that is obsolete in 2).
* The software can limit the user's options, in the manufacturer's favor.
I would argue that if a solution is more expensive or harder to maintain, it is not simpler. Teleologically speaking, being simpler is a bigger umbrella which covers many facets of the intended solution.
I don't think "more expensive" is a valid criterion. When you replace a big chunk of metal with 20 carefully-designed parts that come out to be a third of the price, you have not made things simpler.
Even if it comes out as equally difficult to maintain.
My brain just did something weird. Instead of instantly recognizing two concatenated words, it spent a while trying to work out the pronunciation of an apparently old English word, before Occam’s razor finally kicked in, hopefully before my vocabulary absorbed an errant entry.
I don't think so. It's just easy to over-optimize things because you can.
Personal case in point. I've been hacking together some automated plant watering systems around my house. My initial thought was to have moisture detectors, Raspberry Pi, etc. I ended up just empirically figuring out how many seconds per day I needed to turn on the pump and that was good enough and a lot simpler/more reliable.
I think a clarification is merited even if I think your comment is a bit low effort
Engineering involved, for most of its history, balancing cost (design and production and TCO) x effort x reliability
What people see today as an "planned obsolescence" (which does happen in some cases) is one facet of that balance. Yes you can make an incandescent bulb that lasts 1Mi hours. But it will cost more and probably consume 200W instead of 50W for the same luminosity.
Using React is not an engineering mistake. Using React for a page that has only a "Coming Soon" text and a picture probably is. And the mess of dependencies and tools that you need to use React/npm is probably not justifiable, especially compared to other systems.
That video was a bit long for my taste but I found another one that I watched instead that explained quite nicely how it works. https://youtu.be/amx6fp0s28c
Same guy also made an animation that gives a very detailed explanation of how the AK-47 works. The AK-47 is nothing short of breathtaking IMO. Wonderful! The guy that came up with the AK-47 was a true genius and a real master of engineering! https://youtu.be/_eQLFVpOYm4
Kalachnikov (The _K_ in AK-47) has stated that he dreamed of inventing agriculture equipment. He blames the Nazis by name for having had to invent his famous rifle, even though it was fielded only after the Nazis were defeated.
I saw one recently where each of the pins had tiny wire at the top...
It didn't really affect the game, you could see or notice them.
But when setting the pins, it just pulled the wires, and gently relaxed the wires till the pin was standing on it's own.
These are called 'string pinsetters'. While they have recently become far, far better in achieving very low "impact" on the game, many bowlers will strongly prefer to play on a "free fall" or normal pinsetter. It's fairly rare but there are definitely circumstances that you just won't see happen on a string pinsetter that can and will occur on free-fall; likewise, there's always the risk that a string ('wire') will catch and topple over an adjacent pin.
Personally, I prefer to bowl with lanes that have well-maintained A2s, or alternatively the newer GS-X pinsetters. I hope to eventually build a pair of lanes in my home (my motivational pipe dream), and I'd almost surely go with one of these two even versus the substantially lower upkeep requirements (mean frames between blackout) of the string pinsetters.
Long, long ago when I worked at at bowling alley, when it was busy I'd have to run down to the end of the lanes a few times a night to untangle the strings the pins were attached to.
Some people wouldn't be able to do it and it would be good for them to think about this and realize it, but I hope you don't seriously believe that /humanity/ wouldn't be be able to do it. That vastly underestimates the amount of exactly this kind of problem solving that goes on every day, all over the world.
Don't underestimate humanity by forgetting to look outside of your bubble.
I don’t think anybody invented the whole pinsetting machine and ball return apparatus all at once. That kind of thing was invented through a process of gradual iteration just like software design is done.
Good point; similar to the refutation of the argument that biological eyes are too complex to have been produced without supernaturally intelligent design.
When you only consider the result of a whole pile of small but good design choices, it seems implausible. You have to consider all those steps that led up to the current state. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.
To restore your faith in mechanical ingenuity you need to watch Martin from Wintergatan build his Marble Machine X. It's a neat intersection of tech wizardry with CAD and CAM and old fashioned handicraft https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLLYkE3G1HED6rW-bkliH...
Ridiculous in what way? It certainly solves all the constraints given in the article. What do you see that was missed? Are you imagining that it's running through the middle of the room? That's not necessarily the case. if nothing else, it could easily be anchored through a pulley or ring attached to the wall.
In the same way, I've seen people involve Arduino's to solve simple electrical automation problems, when they could've just built a fairly simplistic circuit.
In a lot of cases, using a $4 Arduino clone (or $2 for a Nano clone) is going to be faster/easier/most certain than a $0.50 circuit, especially if you keep a handful of each on the bench.
Maybe there's room for improvement, a software guided robot could be faster, more efficient, cheaper to run and occupy less space than clunky old machinery.
1st of all, the automated pinsetter is not very old, it's WWII era invention.
2nd where I work, I can clearly see how the 50+ yo engineers think differently than the 40+ yo, who also think differently than the rest.
So yes I don't think the 20-30 yo population would conceive of the pinsetter. I actually doubt they could even describe how the current one works. However the 50+ yo would not do anything else but that, and they could improvise one immediately.
It's a difference between being purpose built and efficient, vs need to thinker. The thinkering aimlessly stops at ~40 yo, when you figured you spent a fair amount of your life goofing around for no good reason (other than sex, money, and your social profile). At one point your realize than you might juts be able to leverage all your assets into something useful.
Okay that last bit was both utopia and off-topic, but it feels good...
I completely and wholly disagree. You walk into any factory that isn't Tesla made in the last decade and you'll know exactly what kind of purpose-built machinery that can be made.
This sort of goes to something I learned as an auto mechanic. When you have a problem, describe the symptoms as objectively as possible. Don’t say, “I need my tires balanced.” Or you might get your tires balanced but the problem persists. Instead say, “I feel a vibration when driving on the highway at 60mph.” This forces the technician to diagnose the problem.
That’s an overly simplistic example but that’s the point. Tell your doctor what your symptoms are, without including statements that suggest a cause, or otherwise limit the scope of the issue.
First step of any technical support case, or just troubleshooting anything is "Define the problem" and that includes when it happens, the circumstances, the circumstances when it doesn't happen, and etc.
One of my first real jobs I quickly became the favorite of some folks on the engineering team. The thing was I was not experienced, I didn't know much, but I followed a simple formula to write up problems, and they liked that. I often missed some basic steps and didn't have experience, but for whatever reason they liked how I gave them information. Also when they asked a question I was very clear and honest with "I don't know" and "I'll find out".
Other smarter techs would make assumptions based on their experience, fiddle with this and then, and then present to engineering this rambling tale that was all about what they tired to fix the problem and didn't fix it.... all while missing what the problem was in the first place, when it happened, and so on.
When I attend trade shows, I often have potential customers come and ask if we sell a particular type of technology. I’ve discovered that really what they are doing is asking if we sell the think they they _think_ is the solution to what they _think_ is the problem. It’s my job to figure out what their problem _actually_ is and then figure out if we have something that can solve _that_ problem.
One has to be quite diplomatic in these situations. They certainly know more about their domain, but I know more about technologies to solve their problem. So I need to pry out more information without sounding like I think I know more about their job than they do.
On the other hand, the job often turns out to be knowing the set of problems for which you're selling a solution (which is quite large for some companies e.g. Oracle) and then convincing the potential customer that this is the real problem that they have.
Interesting; this is sort of the flip side of one of the slides here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532360 "Cognitive Distortions of People Who Get Stuff Done". One of the items is "Correct Overgeneralization", which seems to be basically what you describe in the last paragraph. Making assumptions based on experience, but being mostly right. Surely there's some balance to be struck: there's value in experience -- it can help you move faster -- but you have to be able to recognize and question your assumptions if need be. Sounds like your "smarter techs" were missing that step. They didn't circle back after their shortcuts failed them.
Absolutely there is value in experience! I don't want to discount that at all. I was way more productive longer-term for sure. And those techs weren't bad by any means.
The critical points in my example were failing to properly define the problem, and to some extent failure to communicate when engaging engineering created more work, delay, and frustration.
That would be the right thing to do with a competent technician or indeed your doctor. However, here in India where I live, mechanics and computer technicians are for the most part essentially illiterate. They have absolutely no experience with the kind of analytical and critical problem solving skill you describe. Very often I am the expert in the room, and the only thing preventing me from doing the repair myself is the actual tooling (Plus I don't want to get my clothes dirty :-) ). So I do the do the diagnosis, and tell the mechanic what to do and they do it. Works well for all of us. :-)
That’s different then. You aren’t asking for someone to solve a problem for you. You are just paying them to perform a task. I’m referring to the issue addressed in the article about problem solving.
There are situations, however, where you have to know specifically what you want in order to get it. Using my personal experience with automobiles in Pakistan as an example, maybe 1 in 50 places that's capable of changing a tire also has a good quality balancing machine. If you've just purchased new tires and you know you're going to need all four wheels rebalanced, you have to intentionally seek out that rare place which has a modern digital tire balancing machine and knows how to use it.
It can be solved by directly welding metal to the axes. Considering how popular the 206 is in India, I thouht the OP was also relating his personal experiences with having his Puegeot fixed
Sometimes a subtle difference in the wording of the question may make the difference from receiving one or more helpful/useful replies and getting some snarky reply.
>In the last question, notice the subtle but important difference between demanding “Give me an answer” and “Please help me figure out what additional diagnostics I can run to achieve enlightenment.”
This is true when giving feedback on games too when playtesting! As a designer, I love it when players say "I was frustrated when facing X, and had a lot of fun when doing Y interaction", rather than things along the lines of "I think X is too strong and needs to be balanced by doing W, but I think you should keep Y exactly as it is because it's just right."
Goes for both video and tabletop games. In general it's good to be able to articulate your "root issues" and work your analysis of the experience from there (if that's your responsibility, otherwise leave it to the people whose responsibility it is, the root issues are the only information they need).
Or they want to feel proud their home and show off to friends. Which means getting modern art on their wall, hence requiring a 1/4" hole, and hence the corresponding drill bit.
Let's briefly imagine the world where this thinking is taken to its logical conclusion.
So business thought, why bother with drilling, let's invent Modern Art Affixer, because that's what people really want to do.
(That we can vendor-lock them in this is just an added benefit.)
Then I need a screen mounted on a wall. I can't use Modern Art Affixer, and it's something not common for regular consumers to do, but fortunately there are some (appropriately more expensive) Screen Affixing services that mostly service other businesses.
Then I want to hang a DYI piece of equipment I made and I'm shit out of luck, because individuals doing DIY hardware are too small a market to justify dedicated products.
Coming back from this nightmare - the point is, what happened with the concept of technology empowering people? That is, giving them means to solve their own problems, instead of trying to sell a ready-made solution to arbitrarily specific problem? It's not that I mind very specific solutions - but without more general, empowering technology, we'd be limited to only solving specific problems that affect large enough amount of people to justify a business around it. I worry this already starts happening at the intersection of hardware and software (e.g. most IoT products can be seen as solving overly specific problems to vendor-lock people).
So big thanks to all businesses that keep assuming that what consumers really need are standard-sized drills.
That logical conclusion exercise basically how to suss out, and then create giant scale businesses.
When enough of these exercises in root cause analysis (which is a bad methodology) point to the same problem, and you can monopolize the solution for that singular problem, you have a massive win on your hands.
You have to either trust your mechanic or know enough to avoid getting flimflammed. An unscrupulous mechanic can cost you hundreds in superflous services easily.
What I see on SO is a lot of really annoying people refusing to answer simple questions because they believe, based on nothing, they know more about the question than the person who asked it.
When asking "unpopular" questions on SO I usually include a disclaimer along the lines that I want to know the answer for education purposes and any answer that is not specifically addressing the question at hand will get downvoted and never accepted. This works to some extent.
In the end, I stopped asking questions on SO because dealing with this kind of behaviour was too tiresome. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thinks like that
Never ask them anything about Linux networking. They get so excited to gatekeep the information and tell you that you don't know enough to be safe doing whatever you're doing.
I've actually been super curious lately what happens if you route a PC's localhost to someone else's IP, but I have no clue how to ask on SO without baiting out the obvious "don't do this" and the generic "stuff won't work". Obviously, I could do it myself and explicitly see stuff not working, but I'd like to find out what actually happens under the hood and why things break; SO seems like an awful place for these kinds of "what if" questions and I don't know a better place to ask.
You're curious what happens if you add a route for 127/8 to somewhere other than the loopback interface? Or do you mean making it so that the hostname "localhost" resolves to something other than 127.0.0.1? Give it a try.
Also the case where for the original asker it really was was an XY instance, but now the top google result for "how do I fill a bathtub using a hosepipe?" goes to a Stack Overflow page full of people refusing to answer the question.
The thing is, 99 times out of 100 it really is an XY problem. If you're the 1 out of 100 then it sucks to be you; I guess the free advice is worth exactly what you paid for it.
I don't often make that accusation, but the last time I did that's exactly what it turned out to be. They were trying to dive deep into the internals of C++ to find out why their debugger was hanging, and what they were asking for just didn't have an answer. They finally found that they were doing something that led to undefined behavior, and if they had asked about that instead the question would have been answered immediately.
I visited some dorm rooms in Croatia once, and they had a nice solution to this problem. Both doors opened inward, with the non-hinge side of the doors sitting very close to one of the walls with no doors. Instead of a conventional lock, a narrow piece of wood ran the length of this no-door wall that could be rotated to block both doors simultaneously.
This is like the solution in the article, except deals with the "opens-inwards" case instead of the "open-outwards" case, and is less fumble-y than having to attach a rope to both doors.
I've seen a similar solution in the swimming pool changing cubicles at a Center Parcs in the UK. The cubicles have two inwards opening doors opposite one another. Once inside, you close both doors and fold down a bench which blocks the doors shut and gives you somewhere to sit. Very clever solution.
The bench stays in place. Both locks are linked by a bar, that can be conveniently hidden under the bench. When rotating any lock, they both rotate together.
If you have to fold the whole bench to get out you are less likely to accidentally leave something behind. But I guess the real reason for this design is probably that folding the bench saves some space.
Except if there is a fire and you realise it's stuck. A normal lock can be kicked in if not opened with master key, but that contraption sounds hard to break in to.
There are large gaps above and below, plus the hinges are plastic and the walls are plastic covered chipboard (or something similar.
The bench lifting is part of the system - you can't leave rubbish or water on the bench.
You could solve a safety access issue by having the bench corner removed and replaced with a breakable component; but I'd speculate the materials are such the hinges already serve that purpose and changing the corners would lead to a lot of accidental breakage.
I feel like a fire at a swimming pool might be more rare than a fire elsewhere, just by virtue of being surrounded by water (pool, showers, etc). Maybe I'm wrong.
No idea about this specific example, but if it is anything like normal bathroom locks, I'd expect that you'd be able to rotate the bench back upwards with some sort of key/screwdriver/lever from the outside.
I'd worry about someone being ill while sat/leaning-on/collapsed on the bench though meaning you cant rotate it. I guess this is an issue for any door where a body could block it being opened? At the least in a changing room cubicle these are usually open at the top so someone could climb over in an emergency.
Wow, thank you. I have been struggling forming the mental picture in my head of how the leather rope could work... I didn't even think that the doors would be opening outwards from the bathroom.
In that situation the open outwards/rope solution is indeed more save.
In your case you could design it such that you can’t close the door after use without unblocking the other one. Typically people would like to close the door to the bathroom after usage.
But if the beam somehow fell/rotated in place while no one was in there with the doors closed, you'd be locked out without a non-destructive way to unlock it.
You make the beam weak - strong enough to avoid accidental breakage, weak enough that a solid shoulder will break it. You also make the rotation cammed in such a way that gravity holds the beam failed open.
In other words, the bathroom is a "critical section" and instead of focusing on locks on each door, it's been replaced with one big "lock" that locks them all at once.
Death of the person in the bathroom?
Damage to the hooks causing a jam or releasing the lock entirely?
Simply not engaging the lock at all?
Someone walking off with the thong and using it creatively elsewhere in their hotel?
A few failure scenarios. Nothing's perfect!
Just thinking about this for a minute or so, I don't think there's a way of allowing /only/ one door to remain open-able ('unlocked') that solves the problem. Either both must lock/unlock in the same action or there must only be one door to the restroom (that is, duplicate the resource).
If the two people are accessing the bathroom from the same side, locks are not a problem. Three or more people sharing the bathroom is a different problem.
Awesome solution, simple genius. So many times I've tried to explain a similar principle for this kind of situation. Signs don't work! People don't read them (actually, they often don't even see them, at least consciously). Especially when it's a common action. You generally have to physically alter their path through the task to get their attention -- disrupt the affordances somehow.
If you don't want anyone to turn on the oven, cover the knob (or remove it). Same for a door handle. There's one case of something on the shelf that's earmarked for a particular purpose? Tie or tape it in place. A sign works to give reasoning, but first you have to slow down the distracted and goal-oriented person enough to read it.
Another good example of this kind of design is circuit breaker lockouts: an electrician needs to work on a particular circuit, so they turn off the breaker. To make sure that no-one turns it on and kills them while they're still working, they bar the switch in place with a physical lock that only they have the key for. Better, some models allow multiple locks to be attached (it's like a physical concurrency semaphore). Then the circuit can't be re-powered until all locks have been removed.
A surprising number of these comments are trying to find problems with the solution.
I've noticed a tendency for hackers to assume that practical solutions to real world problems are theoretical, and then try to pick holes in them, forgetting that if the solution is already implemented and in place, then it probably works just fine.
But that’s a big part of designing anything: Trying to find a solution’s faults to then be able to implement a better one or at least be aware of the faults and work around them. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
To echo you, that's also one of the things you painfully learn when working with real software systems: there will always be failure cases you didn't think of. Better to catch as many as possible early. Just because it's working now doesn't mean it will keep working tomorrow.
Opportunity cost. Time spent trying to come up with a better solution to something that doesn't need a better solution, is time that isn't being spent doing something more valuable.
OTOH, one could argue that pursuing a seemingly trivial improvement to an existing solution could - by serendipity - lead to a breakthrough that actually does solve other problems as well. But I'd guess that, on balance, there's a greater payoff for spending time on something besides incremental tweaks to existing solutions. But that's just a guess...
When I was a young child I tied the pantry light's pull chain to string and tied the string to the door handle, just taut enough that it would enable the light when the door was opened.
Regretfully to shut the light off, I needed to first close the door, re-open the door and then finally close it.
As everyone else is trying to re-solve this problem in a better way... Here's my 2p's worth:
Employ a monkey to lock/unlock both doors for you. Use something like a banana for lock and an orange for unlock, keep baskets of both fruits in the bathroom. To stock the baskets get the maids to do it when they change towels.
In product management this is often described as problem space vs solution space.
One of my biggest lessons in “managing up”: agree on the problem, and take any suggestions for a solution seriously. Then work to make the solution you present as good or better.
> often described as problem space vs solution space .... agree on the problem
The hard part being agreeing on the problem!
Sometimes, management sees the "solution", and present it as a problem that engineers then must solve. For example, competitor has brand new feature, and management asks said feature to be implemented (presumably, keeping up with the jones style). But the actual problem isn't lack of said feature, but that customers are not buying, and the only reason that's presented is a lack of said feature.
The word means a (leather) strap - which is why thong underwear and thong sandals are called "thongs" that's what they're made of ... like rubbers being called rubbers (kinda, note a rubber in en-gb is both an eraser and a prophylactic).
I lived in on-campus student housing that had bathrooms like this (the locks on both sides of both doors version.) My friend was in the bathroom during a commercial break of X-Files and I locked him in there. Ha ha. So he knocked on my neighbour's door and got out that way, but he still needed to get back into my room from the public hallway. I was watching him through the peep hole in my door, and to taunt him I opened the door and quickly closed it again. The two problems with that were that the peep hole made it look like he was further away than he was and the door had a hydraulic arm on it and didn't close as quickly as I expected. Anyway, I put ice on my forehead for the rest of the episode and then went to the hospital for three stitches.
I'd say that the likeliness really depends on whose bathroom it is. ;)
> You could, of course, tear down and rebuild the entire hotel, at great expense, so that each room has its own bathroom—a solution that might sound ridiculous, but isn’t so far removed from how similar design problems are addressed every day.
The 'similar design problems' link in this sentence points to an article about how the video game Destiny was delayed due to a story re-write. What on earth?
I was at one of the baths in Budapest recently where I saw another solution to this problem. The locker room is mixed gender, and the changing stalls have two doors that open to opposite sides of the aisle. But the doors open inward, and the bench inside folds down to block them while occupied. Then you have to lift the bench to get out.
I thought this was going to be about the question of why every hotel bathroom has a different way of controlling the hot and cold water in the shower, and why none of these are anything like what you see in most residential bathrooms.
No one has mentioned this yet: remove the two private doors and install a single door in the common hallway.
Yes you lose some convenience by having to be clothed while entering and exiting the bathroom. But at least you guarantee the door is always unlocked when not in use.
Some parts of the solution are left unspecified. Which way do the doors open? Surely not inwards, else someone can intrude. Do they only open outwards? In which case, to get out, does the leaver first detach the rope from the handles?
Realistically, if you're the one solving the problem, then the answer to "Which way do the doors open?" is "whichever way you want, since it's you who decides on how to build them".
I guess if society had no problems with nudity and bath room activities, the problem of needing to keep the doors locked when it is occupied not exists.
Instead of relying on the user to "do the right thing", the idea is to prevent the user from doing "the wrong thing" and making it as automated as possible.
This is course clashes with the "let the user freedom to do anything", forcing subpar decisions and predictable mistakes. Making the interface of system simple is more important that making the system itself simple.
Unless they're HNers, in which case they'd take great delight in demonstrating their superior intelligence by explaining why your locking system is ineffective due to various hypothetical scenarios.
I get what the author is getting at. But this particular example doesn't really help with the conclusion. The solution is still about locks, just that the 2 locks are now linked together.
There are no locks in doors at all. There is a single mechanism physically connecting the doors together, so that neither can be opened, and that can only be engaged and disengaged from the inside.
Each side has two locks: one that is locked when the key is missing, and one that is locked when the key is present. To give yourself privacy, you must also lock yourself in. To exit the room, you must first unlock the other door and use the key to unlock your own door.
It’s also asymmetrical. The occupant of the locked-when-key-is-present room would have no incentive to return the key and to unlock the opposite room door.
I'd have assume the door handles are close to a blank/empty wall... Otherwise all I can imagine is trying to use various things in the bathroom and having to step over a waist-level leather strap running through the middle of the room while you're trying to use it.
As the diagram goes at least, if you were sitting on the toilet, and then decided to have a bath, you'd be contorting yourself over the strap.
Electronic locks was not a thing in 1900. Old cars with manual locks did indeed have the cases where the driver reaches over and locks the passenger door, when the passenger forgets to lock it themselves. And users of old cars will remember the "open front door, reach inside and unlock back door" maneuver.
could also use a mechanical interlock such that when one door opens, it locks the other door, then when you return to your room the act of closing your door behind you unlocks the other door.
This of course doesn't allow you to lock the bathroom when you're in it from other people also in your hotel room. Although this is certainly much less of a concern.
Why? It’s not a key, just a lock you open/close from inside your bedroom into the shared bathroom. Once you are in, you can just walk back into your room unless someone in your room on purpose locks you in.
Very interesting problem! The supplied solution is simple and it works for that specific use case, but there are still some problems.
1) This can only be done where its feasible to connect the two doors with a rope. What if the doors are physically seperated far away from each other, or maybe even seperate entrances to a large bulding complex?
2) You can be locked inside the bathroom if someone locks the door behind you.
So i tried coming up with my own solution to solving the specified problem while also dealing with the problems with the other solution.
First off it makes sense having a system with keys and devices that are easily installed at each door. That way you deal with problem 1.
With this solution another problem arises: You can just remove a key from the room and nothing will work, so a constraint is introduced.
Specifically:
It should be impossible to exit the room while carrying any of the keys, given you don’t work together with the opposite side.
So my solution is:
A connected sliding lock on both sides of both doors, plus a sliding lock containing a key on both doors inside the bathroom. So one sliding lock in the apartment side and two locks the bathroom side for each door. Inside the bathroom you can only lock the opposite sides door by locking your own door first. Locking your own door with the sliding lock containing a ley gives access to the key which you insert into one of the sliding locks on the opposite side. An important feature is that you can not remove the key from the lock on the opposite side without first unlocking it and you can not unlock your own door without using the key.
So with this system it is impossible to leave with a key from the bathroom, and you also can’t lock your opponents door without locking your own door, barring your escape.
At first I thought this solution was the perfect one, but then I realised that there is nothing stopping someone from stealing the key from the opposite side by just locking the opponent door with their sliding lock, removing the key, and leaving the room.
The solution to this is that the sliding lock for eachs side key is connected to the sliding lock on the apartment side. By this I mean that when the door is locked on the apartment side, it will make the sliding lock on the bathroom side unmovable, and aldo vice versa. If you have locked the door on your side, the sliding lock will also be immovable. This way nobody can lock you inside, and you can not steal the opponents key because it is locked from its apartment side therefore blocking the use of the sliding lock with the key on the bathroom side.
So I think this solution works, even though it is somewhat complicated. So heres the user story for using the bathroom.
1. Unlock door on apartment side.
2. Lock door on bathroom side, and take key.
3. Use key to lock door on opposite side
4. Do your business
5. Unlock opposite side, and take key
6. Use key to unlock your own door, locking the key in place in he process
7. Exit the bathroom and slide the lock again.
I guess this is what you would call «over-engineering» but it was fun trying to come up with a solution!
Please tell me if I’ve missed something that would break this, I can’t come up with anything atm.
I have never seen this situation at a swimming pool, and I have no idea why it would be necessary at all? Just have a cubicle with a shower curtain, or an ordinary change room.
All swimming pools in the UK have cubicles with two doors - one that leads to the pool and one that leads to the exit. There isn't any way around the cubicles.
It's to prevent people casually walking into the pool in shoes and making it dirty.
They use a single piece bar that locks both doors simultaneously.
If only London hotels architects had known this, the majority of showers might not be a size smaller than a phone-booth such that you cannot turn around in it and must enter/exit sideways... while not being at all rotund.
Okay, how would tying the two doors together prevent the doors from opening if the doors opened inwards? It’s pretty obvious the doors would have to open outwards from the bathroom into each suite. So the bathtub’s size and position in any diagram is even more irrelevant, I’d suggest.
If one has always lived in a country where bathroom doors (or outdoors, for that matter) as a rule open inwards, maybe the idea of a door opening outwards is too distant to contemplate.
What if the high humidity of the bathroom causes the leather strap to break at an inopportune time? What happens if the strap gets misplaced or stolen? This is not a good idea.
A designed degradation, also common in software. For instance, the low battery mode in iOS is a designed degradation around the fact that is close to impossible to improve the capacity of a lithium battery (the soloution would be a completely new kind battery) so they allow people to disable non-critical features to get a slower battery drain.
“Unlike common designs, excellent designs can circumvent the existence of “unhappy” conditions as well as the influence of other low-performance designs. Many times this requires the new design to lower its own performance and although this is not ideal, this is usually a trade-off that can help to maximize the existing conditions.”:
https://uxdesign.cc/designed-degradations-ux-patterns-for-ho...
In what way is the design of the room a degradation? As I understand it, the hooks work as well as (if not better than) the locks you'd otherwise have.
The degradation is the string that keeps both doors shut. It degrades the experience of the bathroom because it limits mobility inside of it but this degradation was designed to circumvent a larger deficiency of the design (shared bathrooms).
The hooks could double up as towel racks. And also, if the doors are near to the edge of the wall, the hooks will be near the wall too, and so not really take up space.
And it's not like you'll be dancing in the bathroom, so it taking up some room that otherwise won't really be used isn't as big a problem as privacy.
No need for a strap, Bluetooth linked locks that are automated so when one opens the other does to. Or put the lock on the wall rather than on the door and have a mechanical device running up and through the roof to the other door, configured such that the two door locks are restricted similar to the automation.
This hotel was built over 100 years ago and was destroyed in a fire in the 1960s. The article isn't about how to actually solve the problem of locking shared bathroom doors... it's about sharing insights into how designers were better able to solve a problem by focusing on the objective rather than focusing on the implementation.
The 2018 solution to that problem would automatically involve computer vision, AI and robotics. The idea that one could construct a giant mechanical device the size of an entire bowling lane that is purpose built to lift, sweep, collect, rack, and place pins with no capacity for customization whatsoever wouldn't even occur to today's generation of engineers.
You can see it happening in some of the comments here.