I Thought My Company's New Urinal Was Revolutionary

The other day I was at my company's office when I noticed we'd apparently installed a brand-new high-tech urinal.

At least that's what I thought it was.

Look at this thing.

It's mounted to the wall.

It's got sensors.

It's got futuristic blue lights.

It's got that "we spent six months redesigning something that already worked" aesthetic.

Naturally, I assumed it was a next-generation urinal.

So there I am standing in front of it trying to figure out how this thing works.

Do I get closer?

Do I wave at it?

Is there a foot pedal?

Why are there two openings?

Nothing is happening.

At this point I'm starting to think:

Wow. This is the worst urinal I've ever used.

Then someone walks into the bathroom.

They look at me.

They look at the Dyson Airblade.

They look back at me.

And in that moment I realized something.

It's a hand dryer.

Not a urinal.

I've never recovered.

The funny part is that for a solid minute I genuinely believed Dyson had decided to disrupt urination.

Which got me thinking.

A surprising number of products have this problem.

If a reasonably intelligent user can completely misunderstand what your product is supposed to do, you've probably optimized for looking futuristic instead of being obvious.

The best products don't need an explanation.

Nobody needs onboarding for a paper towel dispenser.

Nobody needs a tutorial for a normal door handle.

And ideally, nobody mistakes your hand dryer for a urinal.

A lot of startups build products that feel exactly like this.

The demo is impressive.

The technology is impressive.

The pitch is impressive.

But the user has absolutely no idea what's going on.

The best product decisions usually aren't the clever ones.

They're the obvious ones.

Anyway, I spent sixty seconds trying to figure out how to pee into a Dyson Airblade.

Not my proudest moment.

But also not Dyson's best design.