I’ll admit it. I know nothing about hair care. I once went several years without even touching a brush. However, if you know me you know that I’ve been wearing my hair much longer these days, and with the winter weather the way it is around Philly, using a hair dryer in the morning has become a necessity. So, I’ve started using my HLP’s hair dryer each morning; I’m sure my technique is flawed, but at least my head gets warm.

Anyway, there is one usability flaw with this product that drives me absolutely crazy — the little “cool” button that sits just at the top of the hair dryer handle. Most people, including me, hold this thing kinda like a gun, with a hand around the bottom piece — yep — right where the “cool” button sits. Because of the placement of this button, I find myself hitting it at least once a day. My first reaction, naturally, was to recommend that “cool” become just another setting in the temperature gauge (located lower on the handle), but I am told that “cool” is something used to “set” hair after blow drying, and that perhaps it does make sense to have easier access to this button. That being said, it still gets in the way of plain old normal hair drying on a regular basis, so they really ought to put it somewhere else. And in the future, perhaps even test their products with clueless users like me before bringing them to market.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 19th, 2007 at 8:39 pm and is filed under product usability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.