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Product Use

Here is a series of photographs depicting a typical customer's interaction with a toaster:

Step 1: Plug in Toaster

Step 2: Get some type of bread

Step 3: Place bread in Toaster slots

Step 4: Set desired toasting amount

Step 5: Pull down handle to start toasting

Step 6: Wait while bread is toasting to desired level

Step 7: If you want to stop it early, press cancel

Step 8: Bread pops up when done or cancel button is pressed

Step 9: a beautiful golden brown

Step 10: Enjoy

Cleaning: remove crumb tray to throw away crumbs fallen in toaster

User

For a toaster, users fall into a wide range of people. This includes all ages and economic status, but tend to be limited to people who own or have access to a kitchen. The only major restriction is that toasters requires a user to have a supply of electricity in their household.

For this usability study, we sent around a survey and interviewed several people who have interacted with a toaster on a regular basis. The results of this study is shown below.

Needs

• to toast bread
• low cost
• easy usability
• ability to use a wide variety of bread

Likes

• golden brown toast
• cancel button
• well-defined settings
• custom printed toast

Annoyances

• bread gets stuck inside the toaster
• unreliability of toaster settings
• hard to clean
• burned sides of wider bread
• toast doesn't come out of the toaster high enough to grab it.

Possible Usability Improvements

From our usability study data we have come up with several possible usability improvements:

• including a cancel button on the toaster to give more user control (already part of our dissected product)
• have toast lifted higher after toasting for easy and pain-free removal
• widening slots after toasting in order to remove wider bread products easily
• allow toaster to fit a wide variety of bread sizes, keeping bread from either not being toasted or being burned on edges.