Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Studio Journal Episode 14 – Finally, one about the UX of small sizes



I know I framed this journal as a series of posts about the user experience of living in a small studio apartment and yet the first dozen posts were mostly about the moving process.  I thought the topics that I covered were interesting and somewhat relevant to the theme, so I included them.  But now I want to try to focus more on the original “UX of small” theme.

Appliances:  I never really thought about this before, but a refrigerator that is ¾ the size of a standard model  only fits about half as much stuff.  The electronics in the back is about the same size and the insulation requires the thickness of the sides and door to be the same size.  So to make it ¾ the size, they have to cut the interior in half.  You don’t notice it at first because the design changes are subtle.  But there are only two rows on the door and they are very slim.  The drawer on the bottom for produce is deceptively small and there is only one. 

This winds up changing a lot of my eating habits in ways I wouldn’t have guessed.  I used to cook for a week and store the leftovers in the fridge or freezer.  Can’t do that now.  I used to buy some staples in bulk, can’t do that now. And I have to go shopping more often.  I actually had to toss some leftover pizza – not because it was old but because there was no room left.