Bad Luxury Habits
At a recent stay at a hotel, I came across TV controls in the bathroom next to the toilet. They were remnants of a technology that had long been removed from the room and it got me thinking about the user story for putting this in place. It seemed that it was likely used to control a TV but maybe a music system could have been its target.
Why does one need a TV in the bathroom and for the controls to be placed next to the throne?
This hotel has offered all-you-can-eat buffets for all of its existence so maybe guests spent ample amounts of time in the bathroom. More likely is that when the hotel was being envisioned, it wanted to implement that latest in luxury trends. TVs with toilet-side controls were the trend. Other trends that were important in the late 80s and 90s? Green tiles, marble, and phones in the loo.
Thinking back to that period, there was an explosion of new technologies and people were trying to figure out how to use them. Small TVs, VCRs, satellite dishes, cordless phones, PCs — where did these fit in our homes?
Some of the drivers of what trends took off and didn’t came from what luxury trend setters were doing. The movie Scarface likely influenced those trendsetters, with Pacino’s character bathing in an oversized hot tub in his carpeted bathroom. Someone likely mimicked the movie and then their friends saw this and so on. Or maybe, it was one of the writers of Scarface who had friends with TVs in bathrooms?
Fast forwarding to today, we are in a new era of devices that people just haven’t figured out where to place in the home yet. Smart speakers or screens? WiFi mesh networks and smart sensors, smart thermostats and shades. It’s still a wild west of devices and where to place them and we’ll probably look at some of our decisions the way we look at the toilet-side TV control.
