Comments on: Usability of Air Conditioning

By: Clair Conditioning

Clair Conditioning — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 08:40:20 +0000

Why the hell do air conditioning have heating setting and cooling settings, i think they should have one setting and thats the temparature you want the room to be, whether hot or cold. because hot to someone else is not that hot to someone. Or if it does have heating settings, then why not specify the temparatures that are hot and the temparatures that are cold.

By: pberry

pberry — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:29:19 +0000

You now know what the "con" in "air con" really means.

It's a freezing February day outside, yet I'm sat here in a short-sleeve T-shirt and it's not getting cooler.

By: Assos

Assos — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 11:25:39 +0000

/me think he has figured out the reason behind the constant desk changes at plusnet...

No one wants to sit under the aircon :p

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:42:06 +0000

I'm sure Nick (who used to sit in front of the air con unit) will agree with me that it's got a mind of it's own.

With no one appearing to have been near it today, it just suddenly started blowing an Artic wind at me

By: Scott

Scott — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:36:29 +0000

Set all of the units to 22oC on the AUTO mode... that way they will hear *and* cool to keep at 22oc?

By: Assos

Assos — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:31:41 +0000

The heat setting will make the air con blow out warm air, the cool setting will do the opposite. In reality however all that's needed is for a temperature to be set either globally or locally, then the air con units decide how best to keep the room at the set temperature...

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:34:22 +0000

LOL (a lot) @ this blog. It doesn't help that at least half of the wall is glass window. Gentle adjustments to your local unit should be perfectly acceptable however - even set to warm if you're cold. 'Local' not 'global' setting though. It really isn't rocket science you lot.. thermodynamics mebbe .

By: Be3G

Be3G — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:00:12 +0000

I'm just guessing here, but maybe the 'heat' and 'cool' options direct the way in which the air conditioner responds to the thermostat. In practice, what I'm suggesting is that maybe the 'heat' setting means the AC turns on when the thermostat reaches the temperature you've set it to, whereas the 'cool' setting does the opposite: turns the thermostat off at the temperature you've set it to. These may sound like they'd effectively do the same thing, but they actually wouldn't.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:57:41 +0000

All it needs is two buttons: one with the label: “Make the room warmer” and the other “Make the room cooler”.

That's a bit naive though, because you get hotspots through a room. I.e. in front of windows, near doorways. I guess the idea is that you tweak each air con to overcome it's own micro climate? Does the master than apply across them all with the tweaks in mind?

Who knows.

The one thing I do know though: The guy who designed those controls was an engineer, not a user interface designer!