This is a story about handwashing.

Ever since word got out that the hotel in which I’m currently residing may potentially contain an H1N1 case (100% not confirmed – imagine the PR nightmare), the handwashing has been religious. A side effect is that I’ve found myself paying more attention to public washroom facilities like soap dispensers and hand dryers. Of the latter, the behemoth on the left caught my eye…

…along with its accompanying instruction plate:

1. Insert your hands and Airblade will start automatically.
2. Withdraw your hands slowly upwards through the air.
3. On doing this your hands will be dry in 10 seconds!

Meet the Dyson Airblade.

Earlier this week, I tweeted about finding these Dyson Airblade dryers in the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library (first floor, for those who want to check it out) because they are just so funny-looking…with even funnier “instructions”! Whitney Hess, an independent user experience designer posted at Pleasure and Pain with similar sentiments:

When I’m in a strange, public place, the last thing I want to do is insert my hands anywhere.

Quoted for truth. Dyson is flaunting how much thought it put into the design (the website claims that engineers spent three years refining it) and yet just looking at it made me wary.

Well, of course I had to try it. So I inserted my hands. The first thing I noticed was that the airflow was as strong as one might expect from a device with the word “blade” in its name. The drying experience was therefore quite rapid and effective. though definitely not without paranoia that something would go terribly wrong inside. For me this led to a problem, as said paranoia dissuaded me from inserting my hands to the optimal depth (which I think should probably be more clearly indicated), and I left me with wet lower-palms/wrists. I also stayed for a minute afterwards and observed that none of the next five people who finished washing their hands chose the Airblade over the paper towel, not even the one who had been close enough to see me use it.

Conclusion: black boxes are scary. Internal organs are scary.

Things that happen in the dark are scary. It kind of reminds me of a quote from Harry Potter:

Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

Not that the Airblade is anywhere near thinking for itself, but it just goes to show you the difficulty of getting something new and foreign (usability-wise) out there.

We’ve always used “external” components in washrooms. Soap dispensers, paper towel dispensers, the faucet itself – these allow us to keep our hands where we can see them, and that’s comforting. In fact, the closest we come to experiencing “insertion” is slipping a coin in the slot to get a tampon. And now, there’s this grey thing tacked to a wall with the word “blade” in its name, two black holes, and its own 3-step instruction plate? Never mind that it’s fast, non-heated (apparently, heated air increases bacterial proliferation), and pre-filtered…it’s also terrifying.

Later in the week, I visited the food court washroom at Toronto’s MaRS Center, where Excel Xlerators, from Dyson’s competitor, have been installed.

Now this is straightforward. I wasn’t as excited to use it, but I knew how. There’s an arrow and something that looks like a dispenser — continuity for the win!

And someone lined up behind me to use it.

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