I had the pleasure of staying in a fairly nice hotel for 4 nights last week while at the Northern Short Course. I say "nice" with due dilligence, as my only complaint was the alarm clock in my room.

Perhaps am being over sensitive, as I recently finished re-reading The Design of Everyday Things a fantastic study of usability issues in well, everyday objects.

The alarm clock in my hotel room was the Sony Dream Machine which by any account is a very attractive and full featured model, letting the user set the alarm to play either the radio, a CD or a buzzer to wake by.

But, when entering my room to fall asleep, the last thing I want are features. What I want is simplicity and results. Working without instructions, it took me 10 minutes to decipher the buttons and figure out how to set the radio to wake me at 6 a.m. the next morning.

It was not until the third day of my stay that I did discover the instructions in a desk drawer. Obviously other guests have had similar problems, as the "how to" took up two pages of a laminated 3×5 card:

This is a fairly classic example of poor usability. It is not necessarily that the radio is poorly designed. It does have a steep learning curve, but once I learned the steps it is fairly easy to remember them. Of course, I don't plan to be back in Warwick, RI anytime in the near future, so that is 10 minutes I will never get back.