Case study: Samsung microwave redesign

Published in

Bootcamp

8 min readMar 5, 2023

Written July 5, 2021

A person looks at microwave questioningly

As a UX Designer and problem solver at heart, I am constantly analyzing the design choices of products and experiences I encounter in my life.

During the time I spent at my parents’ house during the initial COVID lockdowns, I was inspired by the issues my parents and I had with the microwave. Casual comments and complaints turned into impromptu design thinking sessions that lead me to test, ideate, and mockup a redesign of the microwave’s interface. This was one of my random projects that resulted from being stuck at home… we all had those, right?

Issues using a microwave, you say? I know, microwaves don’t usually make the top of the list of appliances that are difficult to use. A typical microwave can get complicated, but I just ignore all the weird settings like “Defrost”, and just stick to the numbers, the Start/Stop buttons, and the “EZ On” (or +time) button.

This Samsung microwave is a different story. From the very first use, I found it to be unintuitive and noticed obvious design faults.

I will demonstrate the difficulties through 2 examples.

First, here is a brief overview of the appliance:

The panel above the microwave door features a touch screen in the middle, with 2 control knobs on either side. The knob furthest to the left can be set to “Microwave” in order to use the microwave. The other knobs control other functions of the ovens.

There is a touchscreen interface and 4 control knobs. The regular oven sits below the microwave oven and shares the screen and controls. The microwave oven itself has a few other functions besides microwaving, ex. airfrying.

The only knob related to the microwave is the one on the far left. You’ll see that you must turn that knob to the Microwave setting (circled) to use the microwave.

On to the first example…

Example 1: Say you want to microwave something for 20 seconds. Here’s what it takes…

i. As mentioned above, the preliminary step is to set the oven knob to “Microwave”

This step is technically part of the overall step count, even if regular microwaves do not have this. Designers would want to keep this in mind, and minimize the number of steps that follow

1. Tap “00sec”.

The home screen of the microwave. It has a “Microwave” title and a “Microwave heating” subtitle. The cook time shows as 0 hours, 00 minutes, 00 seconds. There is a power level, a Start button, and a +30 seconds button. There is a battery symbol, wifi symbol, and the current time.

This is the home screen of the microwave.

There’s a lot going on visually, which makes it confusing. Does anyone ever microwave something for an hour? I definitely don’t. “0hr” is a distraction — an extra visual for the brain to process.
Because this oven acts as more than a microwave, having the “Microwave” title is necessary. However, the subtitle, “Microwave Heating”, is redundant and does not add anything.
There is no indication of what you should tap to edit the time. I figured it out because of my exploratory nature, but it took some trial and error.
As I mentioned, the “+ time” button is one of the few I use on a microwave (it is equivalent to my current microwave’s “EZ-On”, which sets it for a minute). So I like that Samsung made it easy to add 30 seconds with the +30 sec button beside the Start button. (With this microwave I often end up heating things in increments of 30 seconds to avoid the hassle of setting a specific time.)

2. Tap “00sec” again, because the minutes are currently being edited (even though I tapped on the seconds in the previous step).

The microwave screen with the cook time being edited. There is a keyboard on the bottom of the screen, with numbers 0 through 9, and a backspace button and an “OK” button that is disabled. “00 seconds” must be tapped next to edit the seconds.

This is the time edit screen.

After a few uses it becomes evident that no matter what part of the time — hours, minutes or seconds — you tap on the home screen, minutes will always be highlighted on this screen.
Pro: It is clear where the user is currently focused- the minutes are highlighted in grey to show that they are selected.

3. Tap “2” and “0”

Same screen as before, but now “00 seconds” is highlighted in grey, indicating that the seconds are currently being edited. “2” and “0” must be tapped

4. Tap “OK”

Same screen as before, but now there are “20 seconds” set. The “OK” button is now enabled. This must be pressed next.

Pro: The blue lines are helpful to show where the user is focused, but they could be a bit more obvious.

5. Back on the home screen, with the time (20 sec) now on the clock. Tap “Start”

The home screen of the microwave, with the clock showing 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 20 seconds. The “Start” button must be clicked next.

Notice that the Start button looks the same as it did in the beginning when there was no time on the clock.

On the initial screen the Start button looks already activated, even though it is not tappable since there is no time entered.
It’s helpful to indicate visually when a button is enabled or disabled. It helps the user understand what needs to be done.

How many steps was that? 5.

Compared to the 3 steps that a regular microwave would take (2–0 — Start), that’s significant. Don’t forget about the lack of intuitiveness throughout the entire process.

Example 2: Say you now want to cancel before the time is up. Here’s what that involves…

1. Tap “Pause” (there is no cancel button).

The microwave screen showing the title, “Microwave”, and the subtitle, “Cooking in progress”. The clock shows 0 hours, 0 minutes, and 22 seconds. There is a progress bar below the clock that is one-third full. Below the bar reads, “Ready at 09:35”. There are the power level and +30 seconds controls. There is a “Pause” button. There is a “View Summary” button.

This is the cooking screen. Again, there is a lot to look at.

2. Tap “Cancel Cooking”.

The screen shows the text “Cooking paused” in large text. At the bottom, there are two text buttons: “cancel cooking” and “continue”. “Cancel cooking” must be tapped next.

3. The cancel confirmation screen.

The screen is empty besides large text reading, “Cooking canceled. Please check the Upper oven”, and a text button at the bottom of the screen: “OK”.

The use of “Upper oven” instead of “Microwave” is confusing. I guess that this is a generic screen that shows up whenever any type of cooking is cancelled in the Upper Oven. However, a screen more specific to the current function -microwaving- would make more sense.

For this flow, it’s less about the number of steps, because technically it’s only 2 (it’s not necessary to tap “OK” at the end there). It’s more about how unnecessarily confusing it was to accomplish the goal.

With a typical microwave, cancelling requires just one obvious step- pressing the Stop button (or whatever variation of that word — ex. Cancel).

Hopefully you can get a sense of my frustrations. I doubt I’m alone in my belief that a microwave should be simple to use.

Of course, I can’t just criticize without offering solutions. Coming up with solutions is the fun part! Here’s my mini re-design of the flows above.

RESEARCH

IS IT JUST ME?

Even though I felt confident about my idea, I know that all good design projects begin with user research.

Because of COVID, I didn’t have access to many people who would be suitable for in-person user testing. I ended up testing my grandfather and my parents. My parents’ data is less useful since they have been using the microwave for almost a year.

I gave the following tasks:

Microwave something for 20 seconds
While something is cooking, stop the process.

My grandfather was not able to complete the first task. He was able to stop the process with the “Pause” button, because “there was nothing else to do”.

I asked him some follow-up questions to gain further insight. Here’s a telling excerpt:

It was frustrating. Not self-evident. I felt I had to read the manual.
— My Grandfather, first time user of the microwave

Overall, the results of my research validated the specific concerns I had with the interface.

WHAT DO PEOPLE WANT OUT OF A MICROWAVE?

I also decided to do a poll among friends to see how other people typically use microwaves. I put a poll in my story on Instagram and got the following results:

Out of 27 respondents:

~89% (24) said they only use the numbers and Start/Stop buttons, and ignore the special settings
~11% (3) said they do use other settings

This research helped validate my thoughts that the interface should be kept simple.

REDESIGN

I had 2 different approaches to my redesign.

At first, I edited the existing format to make it more user friendly (see pictures below).

Same home screen as before, but the cook time shows 00 minutes and 00 seconds. There are “set” buttons below the minutes and below the seconds. The “start” button is in a disabled state. There is a “Microwave” title, and subtitle that reads, “Cook time”.

The microwave screen has the title, “Microwave”. The time entry shows “00 minutes”, with the “set” button below. To the right, the “00” of the “00 seconds” is highlighted in grey, and below that there is a “cancel” button. There is a numerical keyboard at the bottom of the screen.

New “Set” buttons

I put “Set” buttons below the minutes and seconds to give a clear indication of where to tap to edit the time.
The buttons also take the user directly to minutes or seconds (depending on which one they tapped), eliminating that in-between step.

Start and OK buttons disabled

I added disabled states to these buttons to help improve understanding.

Simplified

I removed hours (0hrs) because, as I mentioned, no one microwaves something for that long…
My sense is that the people who microwave something for an hour are very small in number. The product should cater to the large majority of users. (If YOU microwave something for that long, let me know in the comments.)

It was better, but I still felt it was not simple enough.

Keeping the poll results in mind, I designed another version more similar to a typical microwave (see following pictures).

THE HOME SCREEN

The microwave screen has the title, “Microwave”, and the subtitle, “set cook time”. Below that there are empty time slots with a colon between them. Beside that there is a “Start” button in a disabled state. At the bottom of the screen there is a numerical keyboard, with a backspace button and a “+30 seconds” button.

Same microwave screen as previous, except there are now 2 seconds on the clock. The “Start” button is now enabled.

A home screen layout like a typical microwave

Empty time slots- User inputs numbers as one would with a typical microwave (2–2–0 to get 2min and 20sec)
Keypad ready to use- Editing the time on the Home Screen cuts steps in half
Instead of pressing: Set — numbers — OK — Start, the user presses numbers — Start

Inactive states of Start and OK buttons

Visual indication that the button is active/disabled helps the user understand the process and environment

Simplified screen

Changed subtitle to “Set cook time” to help users understand what to do
Removed hour time slot (0hr)

COOKING & PAUSED SCREENS

The microwave screen has the title, “Microwave”, and the subtitle, “Cooking in progress…”. The cook time shows 2 minutes and 19 seconds. There is a progress bar below. At the bottom of the screen there is a “+30 seconds” button and a “stop” button.

The microwave screen is empty except for large text reading, “Cooking stopped”, and at the bottom of the screen a “Clear” button, and a “Continue cooking” button.

Stop button

Changed the “Pause” button to “Stop”

Simplified

Removed “View Summary” button. The meaning of the button was unclear and neither of my parents ever use it.
Also removed the “Ready at *time*” sentence that was below the progress bar. When microwaving something for a short period of time, it’s not that useful to know the exact time at which it will be done.

Watch my redesign in action! Here is an animation I made using Principle:

GOING FORWARD

Now that I’ve analyzed the microwave interface, it would be interesting to look at the interfaces of the oven’s other functions.

Because this screen is shared by multiple appliances, I recognize the need for consistency in layout & design throughout the product. Not only is consistency important for the overall user experience, but having similar formats allows for easier development and implementation.

There is always a concern of feasibility in development — companies may be working with a limited budget and cannot implement all of the designs, or usability may be less of a priority. In the case of this microwave, it’s likely that Samsung prioritized ease of development over usability.

Thanks for reading!

Let me know your thoughts. I’d love your feedback.