Google to the rescue, apparently it’s for people who wipe while still sitting:
Aside from that, for a good example of the choice problem, consider a bereaved relative who has just lost a close family member being put on the spot to choose from among the thousands of makes, models, colors of coffin for their loved one, having to sit there while the salesman goes through page after page of pictures. Sure, if somebody wanted a Harley Davidson coffin, or the relative says “he always liked blue, can we have a blue one?” it’s nice if that option is available. But there should be a default and it should be “do you want to see options or have a specific request, or would you like the default?”.
I think most things are like that. It’s good to have choices for those who have specific preferences or needs, but there should also be a generic default for the masses that just need the thing and don’t need or want to make choices about it.
Isn’t that just saying what I was saying - that the UK and the UK don’t like coloured bathroom ceramics - but with pictures?
A consensus on aesthetics doesn’t necessarily mean that there is any absolute merit in the judgement. For years Botticelli’s Birth of Venus was hidden away in a storeroom at the Uffizi as being indecent. It is now the pride of the gallery.
Oh, I see. Thanks.
I suppose that makes sense. If I had a vagina that needs wiping, then maybe I’d see it more clearly and find that a feature worth appreciating.
My point was that in the UK, it’s hard to get coloured bathroom sets now because they used to be fashionable.
Trends like this tend to go in cycles of rejecting the old and praising the new, which is itself very much tied to capitalism and artificial obsolescence. Not in an organised way, of course. But as an emergent property of the interests of designers manufacturers and advertisers all aligning with the idea that consumers should be dissatisfied with what they have, and replace one perfectly functioning item with another.
Capitalism is great at selling things everyone wants. Toilet seats, sneakers, cars, jock straps, printers, jackets, bricks, and on, and on, and on.
Capitalism is horrible at selling services everyone needs.Like roads, schools, healthcare, police departments, the military, electricity, water, and on, and on, and on.
Or even basic information needs. Out of the 18 seats I guarantee half will not have the dimensions (inner, outer, distance between fixing holes, etc.) that would enable you to check against the measurements of your 100 year-old ceramic toilet. But they 'll have the same picture of the seat half open, on the packaging in 6 different places in 2 or 3 different sizes. And that’s just one example. I was at the garden centre the other day and there was a huge choice of tomato plug plants. Not one said whether it was a bush or cordon variety and the one with three varieties (basket collection, indoor collection, outdoor collection - three varieties in each colllection) - two of each of the three - had no labelling of what the varieties were or which the three pairs were. Just six plants with nothing to distinguish them. Lazy, lazy marketing combined with a contempt for the consumer and a pile them high, sell them cheap, dumb consumers just need tomato plants and don’t care. But for a veg grower variety and type is important and lots of choice is good. But choice is NOT choice if the differences are not communicated. Fuck these bastards who think they are 'marketing - they deserve to rot in hell.
ETA sorry meant to reply to danimagoo, as quoted.
Long ago, I remember that clothing stores had all their clothes of a specific type in the same area of the store. Go to the jeans section, and you would find all the different kinds of jeans together. Find your size, try on a few, and done.
Now, the stores in Toronto all have little temples erected to each brand, with all the crap offered by Kalvin Klein (from jeans to socks) in one spot and all the crap offered by Levis (from jeans to underwear) in another spot. To find something in a particular category, like jeans, you have to visit each temple in turn, like a pilgrim making a tour of the holy sites.
Mercifully, I discovered that workwear stores (or at least, Toronto’s workwear chain, Marks Work Wearhouse) are still organized rationally, by category, thereby saving my sanity and several hours of my time whenever I need new clothes.
Oh really. Please get with the programme. Nobody buys clothes any more, they buy brands! And sets of co-ordinated brand goods. Your practicality is so out of fashion.
You misunderstood my point. I wasn’t trying to save Home Depot money. I was trying to suggest that maybe they might make things less confusing for their customers.
Edit to add: My point was also that, there have been several comments here about how too many choices aren’t necessarily a good thing, and while I agree with that, I don’t think this is an example of there being too many choices. I think it’s an example of an illusion of choice. There are, in reality, only a few choices here; form factor (round or oblong), material (enameled wood or plastic), hinge style/design (plain, fancy, slam-proof), and color (white or off white). That’s not a lot of choices, and all of them are pretty reasonable, but Home Depot’s method of presenting those choices to the consumer gives the illusion that there are a lot of options and it’s confusing.
Fair point. But there is no illusion. There are that many options. It’s just that out of an { 2 x 2 x 3 x 32 } array not all apply to the customer. This is not different from any other display. The whole beer section with 100 choices is, in truth, a null choice to me. I wouldn’t drink that stuff unless the only alternative was salt water or horse piss. Doesn’t make it pointless to display them.
Same with the seats. I actually had to buy new one 18 months ago. And our stores look the same. It literally took us 15 minutes to decide. From a marketing and UI development point of view, I’m all for “Less Is More”. (Book Recommendation: The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.)
But as a customer, I don’t really care. I don’t have to make those choices. Spending 10 Euros more will not ruin me. I save more by not ordering takeout coffee. Not watching that hot TV series in favour of that other one will not impede the quality of my life. And so on. In decades, only two buying decisions were important enough to spend a lot of time on: Where to build our house and how to outfit it. And what used car we were going to by, Because the stakes there were 10.000s and 1.000s of Euros, respectively, with high chances of buyers remorse.
Having all these choices doesn’t mean that I have to make them all. Or that I cannot dismiss the irrelevant ones fast. It does mean that someone else can do this, too, to get the product suited for them.
