The joy of unintuitive design

As such a strong advocate for the design of intuitive, user-friendly products, I surprised myself with my enjoyment of this product. Almost all usability checklists and assessments would rate the product I am writing about as extremely poor, yet strangely I love it!

The product in question is a Japanese watch from ‘Tokyoflash’. Nearly all of the watches produced by the company have unique methods of presenting the time. A photo of the watch I bought can be seen below. As a test of its usability see if you can work out the time? (the answer can be found by highlighting the white text in the brackets below).

The actual time is (highlight between brackets to view): [ 09:44 the face is divided into three blocks the first one has twelve circles, the second six (only five work), and the last has nine. The top block represents the hours, the second block the tens of minutes and the last the units. ]

For obvious reasons, I don’t wear the watch every day. To access the time you have to press a button on the bottom side of the watch. The only way of doing this is to use the other hand. Thus, it is extremely difficult to glance at the time. In social situations, it can be perceived as rude to be checking the time, furthermore when carrying bags or cycling it is a real inconvenience.

The watch performs badly in bright sunlight. It is also rather bulky and prone to scratching. Yet, despite these glaring flaws, it still brings a smile to my face every time I put it on. Assessed as a watch, the product scores badly; however, as a fun product and a talking-point in social situations, it is fantastic!