Hotel Room Gadgets Confuse The Best Of Us
from the too-complex-for-all-but-early-adopters dept
While hotels are constantly looking to add funky new technologies to their rooms, it appears that they're facing some backlash from travelers who are pissed off that the technology is impossible to use. If you're using a TV, you basically want to be able to turn it on, change the channels and change the volume via a remote control. You don't want 50 different buttons with tiny, incomprehensible text. Add to that the "special" video check outs and pay-per-view system and people find themselves accidentally ordering movies and checking out in the middle of their stay. Meanwhile, others are having problems understanding hotel alarm clocks, minibars and safes. For a while, hotels were promoting "smart rooms" that would turn on the light and the radio as you opened the door. Unfortunately, when most people enter a room and the lights and radio come on, they get scared because they think someone else is in there. All of these ideas probably sounded nice on paper, but no one seems to think through the real world use case. Gadgets in hotel rooms need to be very simple and straightforward, since people are only going to use them a few times. They don't want a learning curve - they just want things to be intuitive.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Works for Me
It's not perfect and a little clumbsy, but great for those who want to check mail, etc. while not lugging their laptop around.
[ link to this | view in thread ]