Love – Anker’s PowerCore+ 20100mAh with USB-C port
(Photos from https://www.anker.com )
This portable charger is, hands down, one of the best chargers I’ve owned. It has a 20100mAh battery and features a USB-C port. I bring this charger with me whenever I have to travel; it’s both portable and durable. It gives my Google Pixel phone five full charges. Regarding its design, I like that with USB-C, you can charge it both ways, from the phone to the charger, and the charger to the phone. To let the users know what you are charging, it gives you a confirmation on your phone to indicate which way you are charging it. There’s only one prominent button on this device, it’s a subtle affordance, but you can’t miss it because it’s also a constraint. When you are running low the rounded light indicator also highlights to let you know when it’s time to recharge. I also like the layout and the proximity of the output, Anker groups the two USB ports together and put the USB-C port right next to it, so it’s easy for the users to locate the port they need. When it comes to the light indicator, it shows you how much battery you’ve got left by looking at the number of “dots” glowing, this is both a great example of recognition vs. recall and visibility principles. Last but not least, perhaps my favorite thing about this device is its consistent performance, I can always estimate accurately how many charges I am going to get out of it, and how long it takes to fully charge it back to full, even after 1-year of use.
(Photos from http://www2.meethue.com/ and apple.com)
Hate – Philips Hue White and Colour Wireless
Thinking back, this was definitely an impulse purchase. I still remember paying $200 for these three lightbulbs and thinking to myself how having different colors of lights would somehow going to make my life better — wrong decision. The bulbs from Philips doesn’t fit into the bucket of “meeting a need” or “solving a problem,” this is 100% a nice-to-have kind of product. It’s terrible when it comes accessibility, you need to have your phone, download the app, keep the light switch on at all time, and make sure you have a wifi connection in order to control the color of the lights, not to mention the frequent and mandatory update errors you get when opening the app. I am pretty sure this is why I’ve changed the colors only a few times in the past two years of owning the lightbulb. When it comes to the app, I’d say there are almost not enough constraints to help users find settings that they like quickly, as there are too many ways to tweak and customize the lights. I’ve come to a conclusion that, with things like TV, AC, light switch, thermostat, it’s almost always better to have dedicated controllers for them or else it often creates more headache for you and your family. This leads me to the app v.s. the physical light switch, I feel like the lack of affordance outweighs the aesthetic-usability effect here — just because there’s a nicely designed app, it doesn’t make it more useful for me when I need to turn off the light quickly, the app lacks affordance compares to the physical switch. Overall, I would not recommend the lightbulb, just because the cost-benefit is not worth it.